Category Archives: Website Development

First, let me say thank you to WP Beginner for their EPIC tutorials and guides to fixing/managing/improving/innovating in WordPress. Without resources like theirs, developers like me would be fumbling in the dark with trial and error solutions. 🙂

We were recently hired to clean up an old hacked WordPress website and prepare it for new development. Our normal protocol is to lock up WordPress vulnerabilities, namely that old “Leave a Reply” functionality that enables users to make comments on blog/news articles. Well, that’s almost always a no-no for about a decade now as it leads to URL injections, spam and worse, hacks.

WordPress 5.0 “broke” our sites. But not really…

Yes, after WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg was installed, we did find editing pages and posts rather challenging. The platform is amazing if you are launching a brand new website or blog. However, for those of us who have fully developed or fully cooked websites using an existing designed theme complete with plugins, widgets and more…. you found yourself Gutted. 🙂 LOL!

But have no fear.

One plugin. Fixes. It all.

We installed Disable Gutenberg.

LINK: https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-gutenberg/

Jeff Starr, thank you!! YOU ROCK!! https://twitter.com/perishable

This plugin disables the new Gutenberg Editor (aka Block Editor) and replaces it with the Classic Editor. You can disable Gutenberg completely, or selectively disable for posts, pages, roles, post types, and theme templates. Plus you can hide the Gutenberg nag, menu item, and more!

MORE? READ BELOW!

How to install ‘Disable Gutenberg’

STEP 1: Go to Plugins and hit ADD NEW

STEP 2: Type in Disable Gutenberg in far right corner!

STEP 3: Navigate to the first choice !!! Like below! and hit INSTALL NOW!

STEP 4: Be patient and know you are so close to solution.

STEP 5: Hit ACTIVATE as soon as it appears!

STEP 6: Once you see the Plugin Activated … go back to your page or post and hit Refresh and you’ll see you are in business!

STEP 7: Get coffee, breath and know you’ve been saved by Jeff Starr and the WordPress open source community.

That’s it.

Seriously.

Feel free to read rest of page is if you are interested to know more.

MORE INFORMATION:

The all-in-one, COMPLETE solution for handling Gutenberg.
Hide ALL traces of Gutenberg and replace with the Classic Editor.
Restores the original Edit Post screen (TinyMCE, meta boxes, et al).

The Disable Gutenberg plugin restores the classic (original) WordPress editor and the “Edit Post” screen. So you can continue using plugins and theme functions that extend the Classic Editor. Supports awesome features like Meta Boxes, Quicktags, Custom Fields, and everything else the Classic Editor can do.

Does not “expire” in 2022!

Easy to Use

Just activate and done! The default plugin settings are configured to hide all traces of the Gutenberg Block Editor, and fully restore the original Classic Editor. Further options for customizing when/where Gutenberg is enabled are available in the plugin settings.

Options

Disable Gutenberg completely (all post types)

Disable Gutenberg for any post type

Disable Gutenberg for any user role

Disable Gutenberg for any theme template

Disable Gutenberg for any post/page IDs

Disable Gutenberg admin notice (nag)

Option to hide the plugin menu item

Option to hide the Gutenberg plugin menu item (settings link)

Adds “Classic Editor” link to each post on the Posts screen

Adds item to the WP sidebar menu: “Add New (Classic)”

NEW! Option to enable Custom Fields Meta Box for ACF

NEW! Choose which editor to use for each post

NEW! Whitelist any post title, slug, or ID

Works same way as Classic Editor plugin, but can do a LOT more!
Lightweight and super fast, built with the WP API

Disable Gutenberg is developed by Jeff Starr, 13-year WordPress developer, book author, and support guru.

Super light & fast plugin, super easy on server resources!

Why?

Gutenberg is a useful editor but sometimes you want to disable it for specific posts, pages, user roles, post types, or theme templates. Disable Gutenberg enables you to disable Gutenberg and replace it with the Classic Editor wherever you want. For example, lots of WordPress users already enjoy robust page-building functionality via one of the many great plugins like Composer or Elementor. So many options, no need to feel “locked in” to using Gutenberg!

The Disable Gutenberg plugin is targeted at everyone who is not ready for the major changes brought by Gutenberg. Install Disable Gutenberg NOW to be ready for when Gutenberg is finally merged into core and released to the public (likely in WP 5.0). That way, your users and clients will experience the same awesome UX as before

GDPR

This plugin does not collect any user data. So it does not do anything to make your site less compliant with GDPR. I have done my best to ensure that this plugin is 100% GDPR compliant, but I’m not a lawyer so can’t guarantee anything. To determine if your site is GDPR compliant, please consult an attorney.

Great article: https://digwp.com/2018/04/how-to-disable-gutenberg/
Want to develop in Gutenberg?
https://docs.classicpress.net/installing-classicpress/#migrate-classicpress

Big thank you and shout out for WordFence for monitoring, managing, education and publishing key invaluable articles that help webmasters, website developers and website managers around the world protect their clients and their websites! 🙂

Next steps:

1. As always, before I do anything, ensure back-ups of website & database are in place so that a safety net is created.2. Audit each hosting plan to ensure upgrade easily implemented3. Audit each website to ensure theme, plugins and widgets are compatible4. Sanity Repeat – Just to check your ego at the door, double check that you didn’t miss anything. Feel free to call an expert like Jeremy Broekman or hire a programmer on Codeable.io to help out!READ MORE: broekmancomm.com/wordpress-maintenance-and-security/

Using PHP 5 Becomes Dangerous in 2 Months

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and many other popular website CMSs were written in a programming language called PHP. PHP version 5 is about to reach end-of-life and will stop receiving security updates in two months. Many WordPress and other PHP websites remain on version 5.6 or older. Once support for PHP 5 ends in two months, these sites are in a precarious position and will become exploitable as new PHP 5 vulnerabilities emerge without security updates.

This post is in a FAQ format and describes why PHP 5 is reaching end-of-life, what the timeline is and what to do about it. The Wordfence team is working to create awareness of this issue in the WordPress and broader PHP community. You can help by sharing this post with your colleagues that manage PHP websites or use WordPress.

What is End-Of-Life or ‘EOL’ in Software?

When a software product reaches EOL, it is no longer supported by software developers. That means that, even if someone finds a security hole in the software, the developers will not fix it.

If a development team is productive, they will release many versions of the software they work on over time. It becomes impractical to support every version of the code ever released. So a compromise needs to be made.

This compromise is that the development team will only support their software for a certain amount of time. After that time has elapsed, the development team suggests that the user community upgrade to a newer version of the same software, which usually does things better than the old versions and is fully supported.

Is PHP Version 5 going to be EOL soon?

Yes. PHP version 5 will be declared End-Of-Life on January 1st, 2019. That is, in approximately two months at the time of writing.

The PHP development team’s policy with regards to end-of-life is as follows: each release of PHP is fully supported for two years from the date of release. Then it is supported for an additional year for critical security issues only. Once three years has elapsed from the date of release, the version of PHP is no longer supported.

PHP 7.0, the very first PHP 7 release, was released on 3 December, 2015, almost three years ago. PHP version 5 is rapidly approaching end-of-life and will no longer be supported starting on 1 January, 2019.

The final branch of PHP version 5 that is still supported is PHP 5.6. Because this is the final PHP 5 branch, the PHP team chose to extend the security fix period from the usual one years, to two years. That extended security support will end on 1 January 2019.

Why Should I Upgrade to PHP 7?

As mentioned above, PHP 5 will no longer be supported with security fixes, starting on 1 January 2019. That means that even if a vulnerability is discovered, it won’t be fixed, leaving your website vulnerable.

PHP 7 has many improvements over PHP version 5. These include performance improvements. PHP 5 has many known bugs that relate to performance, memory usage and more. PHP 7 is actively supported and developers are therefore able to implement those improvements and make your website run faster, be more stable and use your expensive resources more efficiently.

As an added benefit, PHP 7 also allows the use of more modern programming structures, which is a nice benefit for software developers.

How can I find out my PHP version?

If you are using WordPress and running the Wordfence security plugin, simply go to “Tools”, then click on the “Diagnostics” tab at the top right. Scroll down to the “PHP Environment” section and you will be able to see your PHP version on the right side of the page.

If you have FTP access to your website, you can create a file with a name that is hard to guess. Then add the following two lines:

<?php
phpinfo();

Save the file in your web root directory and then visit the file in your web browser. Your PHP version will be displayed at the top of the screen. Don’t forget to delete your temporary file once you’re done.

Which specific version of PHP 7 should I upgrade to?

Ideally, you should upgrade to PHP 7.2 which is the newest version of PHP. This version will be fully supported for another year and will receive security updates for a year after that.

If you are unable to upgrade to 7.2, then at a minimum you should upgrade to PHP 7.1. Full support for PHP 7.1 will end in 1 month. However, you will continue to receive security updates for another year after that.

Do not upgrade to PHP 7.0. This version will also become end-of-life in one month.

Does PHP 5 have any vulnerabilities?

Security vulnerabilities are continuously reported in PHP. Some of these are serious. Viewing this page on CVEDetails.com will give you an idea of the volume and severity of PHP vulnerabilities that have recently been reported.

Many of the vulnerabilities reported in PHP were discovered this year. Many more will be discovered in PHP version 5 next year, after security support for all versions of PHP 5 have ended. That is why it is critically important that you upgrade to a version of PHP 7 that is supported and is receiving security updates.

Will anything break if I update to PHP 7.2?

You may discover incompatibilities that need to be fixed by a developer if you update to PHP 7.2. PHP has undergone some changes since version 5 which has improved the language and made it more secure, but may result in warnings or errors for code that has not been made compatible with PHP 7.

However, it is very important that you make sure that your themes and plugins are also compatible with PHP 7.2. If you are using an unmaintained theme or plugin, you may encounter warnings or errors due to incompatibilities. For this reason, we recommend you test your website on a hosting account or server that is running PHP 7.2. If you encounter any problems, contact the developer of the theme or plugin and ask them for an urgent fix. Remind them that PHP 5.6 reaches end-of-life in just two months and that you must update to PHP 7.2 by then.

What if my hosting company does not support PHP 7?

Your hosting account should include some kind of control panel or options and settings page. If you’re not seeing an option to upgrade to PHP 7, you should contact your hosting company’s support team to see what your options are. If none are available, we recommend you transition to new hosting before the end of the year.

What if my developer does not support PHP 7?

PHP 7.0 was released two years and 10 months ago. If your developer’s plugin, theme, or other PHP product does not support PHP 7 at this point, it is quite likely that the project is unmaintained. If the project was being maintained, then they would have had users who are using PHP 7 report problems within the last 2 years and 10 months, which they would have fixed.

Using unmaintained software is a bad idea because it means that security vulnerabilities are not being fixed. So if you do encounter incompatibilities when upgrading to PHP 7.2, this may be a red flag and may indicate you should move on to using an alternative product that is being actively maintained.

What is the easiest way to upgrade to PHP 7.2?

Many hosting providers offer a one click PHP version change in CPanel. This allows you to switch to PHP 7 and check your site for problems. If something doesn’t work, you can switch back and create a plan for addressing the issues you found.

If you can’t find where to update your PHP version, your hosting provider can advise you how to update PHP in their environment. It may mean them making a change on their end or even moving your site to another server.

Remind me again why I need to update to PHP 7.2?

The really good news is that you are probably going to see a nice performance improvement when you update your site. Sure, you may need to deal with a few, hopefully minor incompatibilities. But once you have updated to PHP 7.2, you can rest assured that you will continue to receive security updates until November 30, 2020.

If you remain on PHP 5.6, you may find yourself dealing with a hacked site some time next year when a vulnerability is released for PHP 5.6 and no fix is released by the PHP team because PHP 5.6 is end-of-life.

How can I help?

This deadline is coming up fast. All versions of PHP 5 will stop receiving security updates in 2 months. There are a huge number of websites that are still on PHP 5. As soon as security updates end, attackers will be highly motivated to find vulnerabilities that they can exploit, because those vulnerabilities will not be fixed and will be exploitable for a long time.

To help transition the global web community to PHP 7, please spread the word by sharing this post and helping create awareness about this tight deadline and how to transition to PHP 7.

We’ve seen a surge in referrals asking for proposals. We therefore created this page to help with intake interviews and preliminary scope of work to determine what tactics are key to our collaboration.

Below is a quick preliminary scope of work list to guide our collaboration.

Transform brands and professionalize corporate culture.

Encourage collaborative environments.

Facilitate process that taps into your creativity, getting into the heads of your leadership & management, and translate that vision into tangible results.

Happy Collaborating!

===================================

DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY
Preliminary Scope of Work PROPOSAL =====

Brand Activation Set-up.

Audit, Assessment & Intake Interview

Situation Assessment

Competitive Analysis

Stakeholder / Client DNA Analysis

New Logo Development

Business Card Development

Develop e-Signature email + e-Letterhead

Facebook Fanpage Development

LinkedIn Profile Development

Dedicated Website Brand Development.

Research and Acquire domain matching brand and with search engine optimization (SEO) potential

Set-up hosting and install WordPress

Acquire WordPress theme that provides current and future functionality/design
with ability for growth, integration of tools, expansion, serviceable by theme author, etc.

CORPORATE IDENTITY PROGRAMS.

Since 2000, we’ve successfully created brand management programs, identity campaigns, creative platforms and style guides. We understand that our clients sometimes need guidance, copy, messaging & direction – the plan; and others, they need the deliverables and marketing collateral. We listen to what you want and deliver what you need.

Why BROEKMAN?

We build successful brands.

We make things happen with our infectious enthusiasm, our will for immediate action and our passion to serve.

We Tap creativity by getting into the heads of your leadership, management & marketing leaders through situation assessments, creative briefs, recon and research.

It’s RARE when work with a firm that can handle digital marketing and design/printing/traditional marketing well… let alone an agency with with sales, publicity, communications and marketing background in one.

IT IS ALL ABOUT PERCEPTION

As a publicist and communication/branding specialist, this is our daily mantra.

RATES & PROGRAMS – Please contact us and we’ll be happy to do a free consultation and give you a proposal based on your preliminary scope of work!

Did you know? We also….

LEADERSHIP & CORPORATE RETREATS

We create opportunities for your team to think together, collaborate effectively and team build. Effective strategic leadership through charismatic, direct, clear, concise and assertive communication practices. Effective feedback. Strategic planning. Team building. Your management/leadership team will achieve a greater sense of personal buy-in, purpose and passion to drive the business successfully into 2018 and beyond.

Every so often there is a bug in which WordPress does NOT update automatically. This is one of those updates. So for you website management and one-wo(man) developers, do the update manually this time and all should be good thereafter. File this under #NothingIsPerfect. However, we still trust WordPress above other CMS (content management) solutions BIG TIME!

So what’s new? Here’s what appears AFTER YOU UPDATE!

Welcome to WordPress 4.9.6

Thank you for updating to the latest version! WordPress 4.9.6 will smooth your design workflow and keep you safe from coding errors.

Version 4.9.2 addressed some security issues and fixed 22 bugs. For more information, see the release notes.

Version 4.9.1 addressed some security issues and fixed 11 bugs. For more information, see the release notes.

Major Customizer Improvements, Code Error Checking, and More! 🎉

Welcome to an improved Customizer workflow with design drafts, locking, scheduling, and preview links. What’s more, code syntax highlighting and error checking will make for a clean and smooth site building experience. Finally, if all that wasn’t pretty great, we’ve got a great new Gallery widget and improvements to theme browsing and switching.

Customizer Workflow Improved

Draft and Schedule Site Design Customizations

Yes, you read that right. Just like you can draft and revise posts and schedule them to go live on the date and time you choose, you can now tinker with your site’s design and schedule those design changes to go live as you please.

Collaborate with Design Preview Links

Need to get some feedback on proposed site design changes? WordPress 4.9 gives you a preview link you can send to your team and customers so that you can collect and integrate feedback before you schedule the changes to go live. Can we say collaboration++?

Design Locking To Guard Your Changes

Ever encounter a scenario where two designers walk into a project and designer A overrides designer B’s beautiful changes? WordPress 4.9’s design lock feature (similar to post locking) secures your draft design so that no one can make changes to it or erase all your hard work.

A Prompt to Protect Your Work

Were you lured away from your desk before you saved your new draft design? Fear not, when you return, WordPress 4.9 will politely ask whether or not you’d like to save your unsaved changes.

Coding Enhancements

Syntax Highlighting and Error Checking? Yes, Please!

You’ve got a display problem but can’t quite figure out exactly what went wrong in the CSS you lovingly wrote. With syntax highlighting and error checking for CSS editing and the Custom HTML widget introduced in WordPress 4.8.1, you’ll pinpoint coding errors quickly. Practically guaranteed to help you scan code more easily and suss out and fix code errors quickly.

Sandbox for Safety

The dreaded white screen. You’ll avoid it when working on themes and plugin code because WordPress 4.9 will warn you about saving an error. You’ll sleep better at night.

Warning: Potential Danger Ahead!

When you edit themes and plugins directly, WordPress 4.9 will politely warn you that this is a dangerous practice. It will recommend that you backup your files before saving, so they don’t get overwritten by the next update. Take the safe route: your future self will thank you. Your team and customers will thank you.

Even More Widget Updates

The New Gallery Widget

An incremental improvement to the media changes hatched in WordPress 4.8, you can now add a gallery via widget. Yes!

Press a Button, Add Media

Want to add media to your text widget? Embed images, video, and audio directly into the widget along with your text, with our simple but useful Add Media button. Woo!

Site Building Improvements

More Reliable Theme Switching

When you switch themes, widgets sometimes think they can just up and move location. Improvements in WordPress 4.9 offer more persistent menu and widget placement when you decide it’s time for a new theme. Additionally, you can preview installed themes or download, install, and preview new themes right. Nothing says handy like being able to preview before you deploy.

Better Menu Instructions = Less Confusion

Were you confused by the steps to create a new menu? Perhaps no longer! We’ve ironed out the UX for a smoother menu creation process. Newly updated copy will guide you.

Lend a Hand with Gutenberg 🤝

WordPress is working on a new way to create and control your content and we’d love to have your help. Interested in being an early tester or getting involved with the Gutenberg project? Contribute on GitHub.

Developer Happiness 😊

We’ve made numerous improvements to the Customizer JS API in WordPress 4.9, eliminating many pain points and making it just as easy to work with as the PHP API. There are also new base control templates, a date/time control, and section/panel/global notifications to name a few. Check out the full list.

New capabilities have been introduced that allow granular management of plugins and translation files. In addition, the site switching process in multisite has been fine-tuned to update the available roles and capabilities in a more reliable and coherent way.

Welcome to WordPress 4.9

Yet again, WordPress has smoothed over the design workflow and created opportunities for more “safety” from coding errors. Security is a constant evolution for any web platform or hosting company. Version 4.9 takes things to the next level.

Major Customizer Improvements, Code Error Checking, and More! 🎉

Welcome to an improved Customizer workflow with design drafts, locking, scheduling, and preview links. What’s more, code syntax highlighting and error checking will make for a clean and smooth site building experience. Finally, if all that wasn’t pretty great, we’ve got a great new Gallery widget and improvements to theme browsing and switching.

Customizer Workflow Improved

Draft and Schedule Site Design Customizations

Yes, you read that right. Just like you can draft and revise posts and schedule them to go live on the date and time you choose, you can now tinker with your site’s design and schedule those design changes to go live as you please.

Collaborate with Design Preview Links

Need to get some feedback on proposed site design changes? WordPress 4.9 gives you a preview link you can send to your team and customers so that you can collect and integrate feedback before you schedule the changes to go live. Can we say collaboration++?

Design Locking To Guard Your Changes

Ever encounter a scenario where two designers walk into a project and designer A overrides designer B’s beautiful changes? WordPress 4.9’s design lock feature (similar to post locking) secures your draft design so that no one can make changes to it or erase all your hard work.

A Prompt to Protect Your Work

Were you lured away from your desk before you saved your new draft design? Fear not, when you return, WordPress 4.9 will politely ask whether or not you’d like to save your unsaved changes.

Coding Enhancements

Syntax Highlighting and Error Checking? Yes, Please!

You’ve got a display problem but can’t quite figure out exactly what went wrong in the CSS you lovingly wrote. With syntax highlighting and error checking for CSS editing and the Custom HTML widget introduced in WordPress 4.8.1, you’ll pinpoint coding errors quickly. Practically guaranteed to help you scan code more easily and suss out and fix code errors quickly.

Sandbox for Safety

The dreaded white screen. You’ll avoid it when working on themes and plugin code because WordPress 4.9 will warn you about saving an error. You’ll sleep better at night.

Warning: Potential Danger Ahead!

When you edit themes and plugins directly, WordPress 4.9 will politely warn you that this is a dangerous practice. It will recommend that you backup your files before saving, so they don’t get overwritten by the next update. Take the safe route: your future self will thank you. Your team and customers will thank you.

Even More Widget Updates

The New Gallery Widget

An incremental improvement to the media changes hatched in WordPress 4.8, you can now add a gallery via widget. Yes!

Press a Button, Add Media

Want to add media to your text widget? Embed images, video, and audio directly into the widget along with your text, with our simple but useful Add Media button. Woo!

Site Building Improvements

More Reliable Theme Switching

When you switch themes, widgets sometimes think they can just up and move location. Improvements in WordPress 4.9 offer more persistent menu and widget placement when you decide it’s time for a new theme. Additionally, you can preview installed themes or download, install, and preview new themes right. Nothing says handy like being able to preview before you deploy.

Better Menu Instructions = Less Confusion

Were you confused by the steps to create a new menu? Perhaps no longer! We’ve ironed out the UX for a smoother menu creation process. Newly updated copy will guide you.

Lend a Hand with Gutenberg 🤝

WordPress is working on a new way to create and control your content and we’d love to have your help. Interested in being an early tester or getting involved with the Gutenberg project? Contribute on GitHub.

Developer Happiness 😊

We’ve made numerous improvements to the Customizer JS API in WordPress 4.9, eliminating many pain points and making it just as easy to work with as the PHP API. There are also new base control templates, a date/time control, and section/panel/global notifications to name a few. Check out the full list.

New capabilities have been introduced that allow granular management of plugins and translation files. In addition, the site switching process in multisite has been fine-tuned to update the available roles and capabilities in a more reliable and coherent way.

Stumbled on this Linkedin Article written back on October 2, 2014. Still just as relevant as ever. Definitely some morsels of value here. MUCH good energy for successful collaborations!

When I was at Universal Studios Television, I worked closely with our internal “creative” department producers, website developers and marketing agencies to develop breakout websites, flash sites, internet games, promotions sites and all the “fin-de-siècle” (turn of the century) circa ’99 / ’00 online gadgets.

I remember learning then the critical role of translating our marketing department’s campaign needs and communicating with creative types. My goal: Throw down your charm and create positive vibes with friendly communication to get people to want to work with you and encourage collaboration.

RELATIONSHIP KEYS:

– Being Friendly ALWAYS to establish a really nice rapport
Not because you’re going to ask them a favor down the line, but because it’s what your mother taught you, part of being a good person.

– Being Open to all players on the team.
I treated everyone as if they were someone. Yesterday’s assistant is tomorrow’s manager. This mailroom / office runner can later be a future team member to develop the next Facebook. For me, making friends IS always fun. Getting into the six degrees of people you get exposed to interesting fact (i.e. the CFO is a total rockstar with gigs at Genghis Cohen, or the quiet subdued accountant is actually a successful published author, Or that assistant is the babysitter to Bruce Springsteen’s kids (all true stories), etc.).

– Being Nice in the sandbox
We’re all part of the same team with common goals; make each other look good is primary; much like in professional sports, there is no I in Team (although yes you can cross the I to get the T, but it’s a perpendicular type relationship, a crossroads for you decide – to the left of the T is you solo and the right is the “eam”!

– Being Human
Being compassionate towards other people; by being kind & compassionate you know that everyone has a bad day or has hidden personal issues they’re going thru.

– Being Kind (even when you are right);
Asking open ended questions like “what do you think our next steps should be?” vs “what are you going to do to fix it?”

– Being Assertive
Does not mean you aren’t firm, it means less aggressive with requests,
less emotionally charged, more cool, calm & collected.

Now after running my own marketing & PR agency for the past 15 years, I can see both sides of the relationship well (the client and the vendor). While I remember feeling constantly frustrated with agencies responsible for creative development and not understanding why my changes couldn’t be done within a few hours or that day. Why 30-60 day windows for website development? This stuff seems pretty simple and easy to implement right?

And of course there is the infamous “THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT” attitude that I once had (my mantra for four years in sales at Xerox in Century City). Well folks, when you are on the other side in the creative seat, turns out, it’s not always easy and fast.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CLIENT

1. Set the agenda.

To collaborate with creative types best you have to set the agenda and request structure that works for BOTH of you. Meeting live vs Skype vs conference call vs email only vs combo deal. Take a hit for the team if you know meeting face to face will reduce miscommunication and misunderstandings. Skype is great face to face interaction for introduction meetings, but not always for production obstacles. Do what you need to do. Push on thru. Set your sights on positive vibrations, building consensus, getting agreement on good mutually-beneficial solutions, and overcoming obstacles.

2. Agree on communication styles and preferences.

Do you prefer “development” emails or just the final ONE email summarizing all issues in page form? Phone only for brief discussions and email for lengthy content approvals? Everyone has a different communication style, but there is always a BRIDGE for common ground – Find the path!

3. Define the bottom line.

In my experience, some clients say “less is more” yet they want the transparency of knowing everything. ASK for what YOU WANT! (designers, respect that!!!)

4. Everything boils down to expectations.

Make sure that things are really clear… from the deliverables in your agreement however informal they may be, to the expectations behind progress payments…. actually expectations about what constitutes FINISHED PRODUCT is important, and what is “normally” included is understood differently. WRITE IT ALL DOWN. Reiterate live meetings/conversations in the form of MINUTES from your NOTE TAKING and write it all in an email with “let me make sure we got it right” tone.

5. Mutual respect for production time.

It is mutual for both client & designer to teach the other about how to be respectful of production time and creative investment.

For Clients, not being familiar with technology, website development, creative lingo or not getting your heads around the content development is a challenge for designers. Clarify for understanding. Get second opinions on agreements. Ask questions. Don’t sit back and say you’re the expert. The process is an exploration. Getting it right, means having an open mind and that things can change along the way!

For designers, help your clients find clarity by walking them through a creative process. From Situation Assessment (collecting information about that, clarifying problems, identifying obstacles, clarifying strengths and weaknesses, defining opportunities, repositioning challenges, etc.) to Creative Brief. As the “professional” the client is looking for they rely on your expert opinion, your experienced eye, your vision. Respecting the creative process means that you are honoring the process – asserting and adhering to deadlines & timelines as GUIDE, not dictatorship. 🙂

– Design production timetable graphic. When in doubt, always produce a graphic with phases, days, months, benchmarks and deadlines
– Or Design an information flow chart graphic – https://broekmancomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/bc.WCI_.web-sitemap.d1-010712.jpg
– At times, I opt to include a small budget for build a quick dummy staging website area so they choose pull down menus to understand visually what you are talking about (basic wordpress installation, basic wordpress theme, just create empty pages and launch a menu to help with the client’s need to see something live. Sometimes changes everything!)

6. The “Customer IS Always Right” if you agreed to the terms!

To Designers, think ahead based on your experience and project a budget that you think will be fair knowing the personality and the project demands. Try to find a happy medium between not undercharging and not overcharging. We all find ourselves in underbidding projects, but it’s not fair to blame the client unless they’ve significantly changed the scope of work, list of deliverables or expanded what they wanted. Be clear. Be upfront. Be NICE. Walk them through a “Change Order” discussion. Let them know if things feel like more that what was agreed!

To clients, I understand that not getting a finished product your 100% satisfaction is less than ideal. It will feel that you’ve “wasted all your money” or that you “got nothing” from this. Then the anger trickles in and you get frustrated. Before you go into “I’m not going to pay you” or “I want my money back” mode, take a step back. Review the original agreement. Review the production emails. Make sure that everything is lined up to what you agreed to or NOT, or what the designer promised, but did NOT deliver. Ask the designer to produce a timeline to meet the commitments they agreed to or to confirm their inability to complete so you can make an educated decision. Be fair, but you have to be firm. Good designers aren’t always the best communicators; they’re creative types. But don’t let them wiggle out of being PROFESSIONAL.

Designers, keep your head up. You can’t win them all and please everyone, but you can be a good communicator who acts professionally according to a code of honor & respect. Take on projects you feel are worthy of your time and that fit your abilities. Sure you want to test your limits and expand your toolbox, but do so carefully weighing good intentions and your ability (or best potential) to deliver.

Welcome to WordPress 4.7

Presenting Twenty Seventeen

A brand new default theme brings your site to life with immersive featured images and video headers.

Twenty Seventeen focuses on business sites and features a customizable front page with multiple sections. Personalize it with widgets, navigation, social menus, a logo, custom colors, and more. Our default theme for 2017 works great in many languages, on any device, and for a wide range of users.

Your Site, Your Way

WordPress 4.7 adds new features to the customizer to help take you through the initial setup of a theme, with non-destructive live previews of all your changes in one uninterrupted workflow.

Theme Starter Content

To help give you a solid base to build from, individual themes can provide starter content that appears when you go to customize your brand new site. This can range from placing a business information widget in the best location to providing a sample menu with social icon links to a static front page complete with beautiful images. Don’t worry – nothing new will appear on the live site until you’re ready to save and publish your initial theme setup.

Video Player

Edit Shortcuts

Video Player

Visible icons appear to show you which parts of your site can be customized while live previewing. Click on a shortcut and get straight to editing. Paired with starter content, getting started with customizing your site is faster than ever.

Video Headers

Video Player

Sometimes a big atmospheric video as a moving header image is just what you need to showcase your wares; go ahead and try it out with Twenty Seventeen. Need some video inspiration? Try searching for sites with video headers available for download and use.

Smoother Menu Building

Many menus for sites contain links to the pages of your site, but what happens when you don’t have any pages yet? Now you can add new pages while building menus instead of leaving the customizer and abandoning your changes. Once you’ve published your customizations, you’ll have new pages ready for you to fill with content.

Custom CSS

Sometimes you just need a few visual tweaks to make your site perfect. WordPress 4.7 allows you to add custom CSS and instantly see how your changes affect your site. The live preview allows you to work quickly without page refreshes slowing you down.

PDF Thumbnail Previews

Managing your document collection is easier with WordPress 4.7. Uploading PDFs will generate thumbnail images so you can more easily distinguish between all your documents.

Dashboard in your language

Just because your site is in one language doesn’t mean that everybody helping manage it prefers that language for their admin. Add more languages to your site and a user language option will show up in your user’s profiles.

Introducing REST API Content Endpoints

Content endpoints provide machine-readable external access to your WordPress site with a clear, standards-driven interface, paving the way for new and innovative methods of interacting with sites through plugins, themes, apps, and beyond. Ready to get started with development? Check out the REST API reference.

9 Hidden Features in the WordPress Media Library Only Power Users Know

The WordPress media library can do a lot more than just store your media files. It is a powerful tool that covers all of your media management needs and more, and I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about it.

In this article, I’ll explain how you can leverage your library to its full potential – discussing everything from image uploading to image compression and uploading limits to the effects of cropping.

I’ll also cover media management in WordPress and image editing using the library. Finally, I’ll present you with techniques on how you can organize and download your entire library without having to use an FTP client.

Let’s get cracking!

The WordPress Media Library.

An Introduction to the Media Library

The WordPress Media Library is essentially a directory of every single media file that has been uploaded to your site (whether it is ultimately published or not).

Media files include images, videos, audio and even documents. Regardless of where you upload the media to your site, it will show up in the library from where you can view, edit and manage it.

You can also integrate various plugins with your library to kick it up a notch. It’s flexible, portable and customizable. Its advances in recent versions of WordPress have made it one of the most polished features in the world’s most popular content management system.

How to View and Search Your Media Library

You can access the library by clicking Media in the sidebar. You have two viewing options: grid (shown above) and list:

The media library list view.

WordPress also enables you to filter and search for images by file type, date uploaded and keyword:

How to Change the Media Library Upload Limit

If you’ve ever attempted to upload large media files, you may have come across an error message along the following lines:

The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini

Fortunately, this problem can be solved relatively easily.

But before we proceed, it’s sensible to note that upload limits are there for a reason. Unless you’re uploading a video or audio file (most people will tend to host these on specialized external services), there should be no reason for your media files to exceed your upload limit. Files that take a long time to upload will take a long time to download (which will of course negatively affect the user experience), not to mention the strain put on your server.

How to Prevent Duplicate Image Files

Whenever you upload an image file to WordPress, is likely to duplicate it into multiple sizes. This can be highly useful if you, for example, would like to display image thumbnails and link to larger versions. However, for most people, those extra image files represent nothing other than a waste of space.

And if you’re anything like me (read: anal-retentive), all of those redundant files will bug the hell out of you.

Let’s start by checking out the different image size that WordPress wants to create by navigating to Settings > Media:

Just change the width and high numbers to 0 and WordPress will stop producing those pesky extra image files.

While you’re at it, if you’ve got a huge archive of redundant images, use the free Image Cleanup plugin to eradicate them in just a few clicks:

2222 images! I’ve got some cleaning up to do…

How to Edit Images Within WordPress

My general advice would be that you edit your images before you upload them, but if you’re here I’m going to assume that you’re interested in editing image files within WordPress.

Well, you’re in luck, because for a content management system, WordPress offers pretty damn sophisticated image editing functionality. Just click the Editbutton within the Media Library and you’ll be presented with a screen something like this:

You’re able to rotate, flip, scale and crop any image in your Media Library, as well as add a caption, alt text, description, and change the filename. You can apply the changes to all sizes of the same image if you’d like by clicking the “All image sizes” radio button under Thumbnail Settings.

The rotate, flip and undo/redo tools are all self-explanatory, so let’s focus on cropping and resizing.

Cropping an Image

Using WordPress you can crop images in multiple ways. The simplest way is exactly how you do it on any other image editing tool: Drag the selection box to choose how you’d like the image to be cropped.

The other way involves one extra step but ensures that the aspect ratio of the image stays intact. Enter the values for your preferred aspect ratio, press the shift key and adjust the selection box.

The third way to crop an image using WordPress’ inbuilt tool is by manually entering the dimensions of the selection box. The dimensions must be entered in pixels. If your pixel estimation game is strong, you can use this last method to crop images.

Does all of the above leave you a little confused? Don’t worry – WordPress has really handy tooltips to help you along the way. Whenever you’re at a loss, just hit one of the blue question marks for more information:

Scaling an Image

Scaling images in WordPress is a lot simpler than cropping and resizing them manually. All you have to do is enter either a new width or height (the other will adjust to keep the ratio correct) and click Scale. Yes, it really is that simple.

The only downside of scaling is that you can only scale down. Scaling up would ruin the pixel density. If you accidently scale your image down to a miniscule size then instead of re-uploading it, press the Undo button and have a go at it again.

How to Download Your WordPress Media Library

Have you ever felt the need to download your entire media library? It may be because you have an excellent collection that you want to have backed up on your system or simply because you need the media files for distribution.

With a bit of googling you’ll find some techniques involving FTP clients. But for WordPress development dummies (don’t worry – I’m one of them) we have an easier way to download the entire Media Library. Just download the free downML – Download Media Library plugin and you’ll be able to download a zip file of your entire library!

Note that, depending upon the size of your Media Library, using this plugin could lead to a timeout. You may need to discuss how to best utilize this plugin with your hosting provider.

Do you use the Media Library on a regular basis? In your opinion, what are some other must-knows about media management? Let us know in the comments below.

UPDATE YOUR DNS VIA CNAME OR A RECORD

Thanks to WP Engine, we found this awesome page describing a very logical process to understand what you will need to do to point your staging website (i.e. WP Engine, etc.) and the difference between a CNAME and an A Record.

OVERVIEW:

The final step of the migration process is to direct traffic to the WP Engine website. In other words, when people go to your domain name, we want them to see the website hosted on WP Engine. This will require updating your domain’s DNS zone file record with your WP Engine IP address. By the end of this step, when people to go your website using the domain name, they will be directed to your newly migrated website.

Before continuing we’d like to make you aware that there are two methods in configuring your DNS:

CNAME

A Record

We highly recommend all of our customers utilize a CNAME when configuring DNS as this provides flexibility in the event that your site needs to be migrated. Unlike an A Record that utilizes an IP Address, a CNAME will never change even if your site moves to a different server.

WEBSITE PREPARATION:

If you’ve used the hosts file trick to view your website on WP Engine, you can proceed to the next step. If you’re still using the temporary URL (ex: [sitename].wpengine.com) then you will need to update the URL to your live domain.

Update WordPress URL

LOCATE WHERE YOUR DNS IS HOSTED:

If you already know where your DNS is hosted, you may skip this part and proceed to the next step. If you’re not sure who hosts your DNS record, you may do a WHOIS record lookup. Go to pureWhois, type in your domain name, and click on ‘Search.’ On the next page you will see a long record. Towards the bottom of a page, locate a section called “Name Servers.” The Name Servers are usually named after the company where you have the DNS record hosted. So for example, if one of the Name Servers is called ‘COCO.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM’ then that means the DNS record is hosted with CloudFlare.

Please note that there are host providers that own the nameservers, such as BlueHost, and because of this you will need to setup your nameservers elsewhere. Your current host can help you determine how to move your nameservers.

LOG INTO YOUR DOMAIN MANAGER:

Once you’ve identified where you domain’s DNS record is hosted, the next step is to log into your Domain Manager to change the DNS zone file record. Below are the links to the common DNS hosting companies with their instructions on how to access the Domain Manager:

UPDATING THE RIGHT RECORD

You will only need to perform one of these. WP Engine recommends only utilizing the CNAME as described at the top of this article, as this makes your site more flexible in the event it needs to be migrated.

Update The CNAME

Once logged into your Domain Manager, select CNAME for your Record Type (also called Zone Function) instead of A Record. Once changed, input your WP Engine CNAME, which is going to be yourinstall.wpengine.com. You can learn more about finding your CNAME here. Save the record and allow a few hours for the DNS propagation period to take place.

Update The A Record

First, you’ll need to find the IP address that is associated with your WP Engine account. To locate the WP Engine IP, you can follow the steps in this document: “How to Find Your IP Address?” Additionally, you can simply ping [yourinstall].wpengine.com. If you don’t know how to ping a domain, you can use this website to find your IP: Site24x7. Just type in the [yourinstall].wpengine.com address, enter the access code, and click on the button ‘Find IP.’Lastly, you can find the IP address associated with an account by logging in to your User Portal, clicking on the account that you need the IP for, and looking at the Overview Page:

The ‘A’ record controls what IP address your website traffic goes to. All other records will stay the same. Locate the ‘A’ record instances of your current IP address and replace it with your WP Engine IP. Save the changes, and now we have to wait. On average, it takes 2-4 hours for the DNS record change to take into effect, but technically speaking it may take as long as 24 hours total. This is a result of the IP change having to propagate to servers across the world, and unfortunately cannot be expedited.

Once you’ve configured your DNS, you may use the Launch Phase within the Migration Checklist to verify that your DNS has been pointed to us; which you may find in your User Portal.

"Special thanks to Nicole Nash, Web Designer at TechRepublic for a putting together a SOLID good summary and checklist!!! Reposting this amazing content as a resource for clients who are interested and are prioritizing. "

—

Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that businesses and nonprofit services providers make accessibility accommodations to enable the disabled public to access the same services as clients who are not disabled. This includes electronic media and web sites. While the ADA applies to businesses with 15 or more employees, even smaller businesses can benefit from ensuring that their websites are ADA compliant. Doing so opens your company up to more potential clients and limits liability. Web developers should include ADA compliant features in the original site and application plans.

This is particularly important when working for a government agency or government contractor, as these organizations must follow web accessibility guidelines under Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Although ADA and Section 508 compliance are different, the published checklist for Section 508 compliance offers insight into ways to make websites accessible for people with disabilities, and thereby work toward ADA compliance.

A link is provided to a disability-accessible page where the plug-in can be downloaded

All Java applets, scripts and plug-ins (including Acrobat PDF files and PowerPoint files, etc.) and the content within them are accessible to assistive technologies, or else an alternative means of accessing equivalent content is provided

When form controls are text input fields use the LABEL element

When text is not available use the title attribute

Include any special instructions within field labels

Make sure that form fields are in a logical tab order

Include a ‘Skip Navigation’ button to help those using text readers

(Courtesy U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)

If the site meets all these criteria, it is likely accessible to people with disabilities. The best test is to obtain feedback on the site’s ease of use from people who are blind, deaf, and have mobility disabilities, then address their feedback with site improvements.

When collecting feedback, ask users what type of adaptive technologies they use. This will allow you to cater your website to your particular clientele, and will help you appoint resources toward the best compliance options. Navigating the Internet is particularly challenging for people with limited or no vision. Many blind people use specialized web browsers and software that works with standard web browsers, like Internet Explorer, that have features that enable users to maximize their Internet use and experience. This screen reading software reads the HTML code for websites, and gives the user a verbal translation of what is on screen.

Web developers need to keep this in mind when creating websites. The best screen readers use naturalized voices and alter tone and inflection based on HTML tags, so choose layout elements carefully. It is also important to keep in mind that navigation is significantly slower when using a screen reader than it is for sighted people. Sighted people don’t have to wait for the reader to get to the link we want- we spot links quickly and are able to navigate to our sought items, often without having to do any reading at all. Minimizing graphics also helps shorten reading times and speed navigation for disabled users.

Don’t wait for user feedback to discover the gaps in your website’s accessibility. Conducting your own trial run will tell you where the site has too many graphics, and where HTML tags don’t convey information accurately. It’s wise to do trial runs with as many of the most popular screen readers available:

Development tools and tutorials exist to help web designers meet compliance standards and go beyond to offer disabled users an enjoyable experience (and keep them coming back). Check out the following for more information:

You probably won’t have to check your site with all of the available evaluation tools out there, but it is a good idea to do so for the most common web browsers. Just as accessibility software makes it easier for people with disabilities to navigate the Internet, these tools make it easier for developers to ensure accessibility from the start. When you think you’ve mastered it, go back through the Section 508 compliance checklist to ensure you’ve met every goal.

Launched the newly founded Family Dynamics Assistance Center, a network of family-focused, vetted professionals and service providers for improving family, alternatives to litigation, legal and personal advice and related services. Amazing group! www.fda.center

We are nearing the finishing line after a wonderful engagement to repackage Stephen Wise Temple – Coming this February 2016! – before www.wisela.org after COMING SOON!

Developed new USA brand for Mexico-based Prendamex (big shout out to Fernando Calderón Angues of Lordcuz.com – www.prendamex-usa.com/

Revamped Mount Sinai Memorial Parks & Mortuaries – www.MountSinaiParks.org – if you haven’t seen check out this new amazing community engagement platform for Jewish funeral homes and tributes!

We’ve been busy with a 3 1/2 year engagement building legacy website for William Brice, a veteran artist who’s work remained under the radar due to his gentlemanly humbleness and modesty, however will soon come this Spring 2016 at www.WilliamBrice.org

TRANSFER AWAY FROM REGISTER.COM

For those that need help with transferring their website domain from Register.com to GoDaddy, here’s the link to a how-to page on GoDaddy.com…. conveniently copied here for your convenience.
https://www.godaddy.com/help/transfer-away-from-registercom-8033

Before you can transfer your domain name registered with Register.com to us, you need to prepare your domain name so it will successfully complete the transfer process. You must make sure of the following before you begin:

The domain name has been registered at Register.com for at least 60 days.

The domain name contact information has not been changed within 60 days.

Once you ensure that the domain is eligible for transfer, you must follow the basic steps for preparing a domain for transfer before you can begin the process with us:

Step in the Process

Reason

Disable privacy settings

If your domain has Private Registration, a service that hides your personal information from the public, you will not be able to confirm your admin email address in the Whois database. Contact your current registrar to disable the private registration.

Confirm administrative contact info

As part of the transfer process, GoDaddy emails the Administrative Contact at the address listed in the Whois database. This email contains the Transaction ID, Security Code, and instructions that are used to approve the transfer.

Unlock domain

By default, most domains are locked to prevent unauthorized transfers. Before a transfer is requested, the lock must be removed and the status verified as “Off.”

Obtain authorization code

Get an authorization code (also known as an EPP code or transfer key) from your current registrar.

Disable privacy settings

As with most registries, you will need to contact Register.com directly for assistance removing privacy.

Once you’ve completed these basic steps at Register.com, you’ll need to shift your attention over to GoDaddy to complete the process by purchasing a domain name transfer and authorizing the transfer to us.

Purchase Domain Name Transfer

You must purchase a domain name transfer from our website. We send an email message to the domain name’s administrative contact after you purchase the transfer. The email contains the transfer IDs (transaction ID and security code) you’ll need to authorize the transfer in to your account with us.

NOTE: If the extension you want to transfer is not listed, you cannot transfer the domain name to us.

When you purchase the transfer, select one of the following nameserver options:

Keep the existing nameservers — If you have a hosted website for your domain name (with us or another company), select this option to ensure that your site does not go down during the transfer.

Change … to park nameservers — If you have an email account with us for the domain name, are using our Off-site DNS, or if you’ve created a Premium DNS transfer template prior to the transfer, select this option. For more information, see Managing Domain Names with Off-site DNS and.

Authorize Domain Name Transfer to Us

In the Transaction ID and Security Code fields, enter the transfer IDs we sent to the administrative contact’s (admin) email address, and then click Add.

NOTE: If you did not receive transfer IDs, click Resend Transfer IDs.

Do one of the following:

Select the Basic tab, and then enter the Authorization Code from the current registrar (if applicable) in the field next to your domain name.

Select the Bulk tab, and then enter one domain name and its authorization code per line. Separate each domain name from its authorization code with a comma, space, or tab.

Select I authorize the transfer…, and then click Finish.

Click OK.

NOTE: For most domain name extensions, a transfer between registrars takes five to seven days from the time you authorize it. The process and time required for transfer completion can vary for certain extensions, such as country-code top-level domain names (ccTLDs). For more information, see About ccTLDs (Country-Code Domain Names), and then click the Help article for your extension.

Let’s start from the beginning.DPRP stands for DirectPayment Recurring Payments. It’s a module that enables you to have multiple payments, subscriptions and recurring payments with your shopping cart forms when using PayPal API integrated. For instance, we use PayPal with our favorite 3rd party form company, JotForm (www.jotform.com). Been using them for YEARS, if not just about a decade soon!

Despite the fact that it’s a feature that should be enabled automatically when you signed up for PayPal’s legacy “Website Payments Pro” (PayPal 3.0) OR when you signed up for a new “Payments Pro” account (PayPal 2.0)(why is the newer one 2.0 and the older one 3.0 is BEYOND me)….

You MUST enable this feature. Calling into customer support was a crazy amount of loops with some very informed amazingly helpful sales and customer support reps and OTHERS were trying to read the internal information/FAQs board and couldn’t find the answer. Was a frustrating experience to say the least.

RESOLUTION. READ HERE. 🙂

Big shout out to Paid Memberships Pro for their 2012 post!

STEP ONE:
Log into your PayPal account

STEP TWO:
Follow this link to a legacy page you’ll never find in search or posted online or on PayPal.
It’s an old link from 2012 or so to add the Recurring Payments feature onto your account.
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_dp-recurring-payment-signup

This page will have you go through a checkout form to add Recurring payments to your account.

Screenshot of the SIGN UP page – what you’ll see when you click the above link!!!!!

SCREENSHOT of what you’ll see AFTER you agree. This will effectively remove the DPRP is Disabled
message and enable you to get started in accepting RECURRING PAYMENTS. Worked within minutes.

Welcome to WordPress 4.2.1

Security Release

Version 4.2.1 addressed a security issue. For more information, see the release notes.

An easier way to share content

Clip it, edit it, publish it. Get familiar with the new and improved Press This. From the Tools menu, add Press This to your browser bookmark bar or your mobile device home screen. Once installed you can share your content with lightning speed. Sharing your favorite videos, images, and content has never been this fast or this easy.

Drag the bookmarklet below to your bookmarks bar. Then, when you’re on a page you want to share, simply “press” it.

We know working with multiple people can be difficult. With conversations scattered across email threads and chat windows, feedback can get lost and it can take forever to get everyone on the same page.

That process just got much simpler. Now you can post comments to files on the Dropbox website — so conversations stay organized in one place, and you can gather feedback in just one step.

To bring someone into the loop, just type “@” followed by their name or email address. They’ll get an email notification with both your comment and a link to go right to the file.

Yes, it happens.

For starters, you don’t cry and you certainly don’t ignore it. Don’t get angry (well, it’s actually a source to channel some great Spartan workouts, but that’s another discussion). You can do this. We’re either going to RECOVER ourselves or we’re going to hire someone to do it. The more you know what’s involved the less overwhelming it will be (on the other side of FEAR is knowledge). 🙂

Time-to-recovery depends on extent of damage and technical skill of administrator

Two options:

Do it yourself

Get help from specialists

STEP 2: BUILD TEAM OR DO YOURSELF

Do you have skills and are doing yourself? Follow the below. Otherwise, do get yourself a good professional recommendation from your network. We’re happy to help walk you through the steps for a nominal fee.

STEP 3: THE PRODUCTION LIST

1. Contact Hosting Company to determine shared server is secure with infection or if its just you who is toast. If yes, request change server. If you have money, go to shared virtual server which attracts more serious clients. If you have even more money, get a dedicated server!

2. Log into Google Webmaster Tools launched (specialists know how to do) – will be using tools to review and fix search

3. Assess the Damage and Identify the Vulnerability.

Compare WordPress code to the original source (hidden malware pops out as a big ugly difference)

Compare theme code to the original source

Remove any malware found

4. Clean and Maintain your site

Update WordPress to the latest version. Doing this ensures that there are no security loopholes, which I’m sure there was!

WORDPRESS MAINTENANCE & UPGRADES

For over 10 years, we’ve been developing, managing, updating and moderating WordPress-based websites. One thing we’ve learned along the way, similar to ANY website and ANY content management system, keeping the foundation integrity solid requires minimal, but constant digital TLC = aka love, care and maintenance (like any relationship!).

In today’s digital age where security and data integrity are critical to ALL (from the one wo(man) show to the Fortune 100), we all desire to NOT be hacked, to NOT have downtime, to MAINTAIN our website integrity, to ENSURE security… to give you and your staff peace of mind!!!

Here’s a quick and dirty list of things we do as part of our one-off or monthly retainers!

WORDPRESS MAINTENANCE CHECKLIST

Website Backups

Back-up core files using BackUpBuddy or BackUpWPPro that make your website work!
(can also backup WordPress natively via FTP as well as backup the MySQL database via your
hosting account’s cPanel or PhpMyAdmin)

File/database backups – auto performed once per weekly (min)

Backups stored offsite (Amazon S3)

Restore from backup once every 3-4 months to ensure backups valid;
this ensures that if/WHEN the site gets hacked, we’ll get up and running FAST!

ADVERTISING PLATFORMS

Why use it: Advertising allows businesses to quickly validate whether or not something will work over the long term. Advertising can be used as a testing platform as well as a growth mechanic. The two platforms below provides easy access into a global market and is highly cost effective if used correctly. I’ve used both of them to validate ideas, generate leads (lots of them) and drive eyeballs to my content.

Google Adwords (paid): There are roughly 11 billion searches on Google per month. That’s a helluva lot of people hungry for information. Google’s Adwords program offers you the ability to tap into that opportunity. You can write and publish ads that display on the search results. The ads are triggered based on a keyword a user has typed in – a keyword that you loaded into the system. You only pay when someone clicks on the ad. The system in reality is a lot more complex than that, but you get the idea. People who are searching for something are a lot more receptive to advertising messaging as opposed to someone just being served a banner. You’re not pushing advertising onto them. They’re searching for it. You’re pulling them in.

Facebook Ads (paid): Facebook ads work very well for me. They are great for lead generation when you have a proper lead generation page. You can be super targeted with your ads – really zone into your customer profile. If your business already has a Facebook Business Page, you can run specific ads to help you grow it’s fanbase.

BUSINESS & BRAND PROTECTION

Why use it: You’ve worked really hard to build your business, get it online, create great content and share it with the world. Then suddenly someone steals it or someone badmouths your brand.

Plagium (free & paid): Don’t let people rip off your content. If you suspect that someone might be plagiarizing your content, simply copy and paste it into Plagium OR click the “Submit URL” tab and run the page address. It will show you exactly who has copied your content.

Google Alerts (free): A very handy alerts tool. Simply add your brand name and save your alert. Google will deliver the alerts to your Google account email address. This is a great tool to keep track of bloggers or other publishers talking about your brand.

TweetAlarm (free): Like they say on their website. It’s like Google Alerts for Twitter. Things can spread like wildfire on Twitter, and quick. With TweetAlarm you simply set the keywords or hashtags you would like to monitor (specific to your business off course) and set the alert frequency. TweetAlarm will make sure to not include tweets coming from your own account. Pretty nifty!

HyperAlerts (free & paid): What about Facebook! Thank heavens for HyperAlerts. Works pretty much the same as TweetAlarm. Simply add your business fan page to the HyperAlerts monitoring list and set your notification interval.

CLOUD STORAGE

Why use it: If you need to store data and have access to it from anywhere at any time, then cloud storage is the answer. It’s effective and cost effective. Top cloud storage players aggressively work around the clock to provide more for less. The below cloud storage services are what I use.

Google Drive (free 15gb): I’m a huge fan of Google Drive. I’ve got the apps installed on all my mobile and desktop devices. What I like most is that I can edit documents. Why would you use this? Well, if you travel a lot then then you can take your files with you anywhere. As long as you have a web connection. You get 15gb of free space and you can increase the size for a small fee.

OneDrive (free 7gb): Microsoft only gives you 7GB of free space. While it lacks in space it makes up elsewhere. It supports all major mobile devices – Android, iOS, Windows Phone and believe it or not…wait for it…Blackberry. Most impressive feature is the ability to collaborate across operating systems – it works with Windows and Mac. It lacks when it comes to integration with other 3rd party tools due to limited access to its API.

Dropbox (free 2gb): A household name by now for sure. The Dropbox desktop app is available for download on Windows, Mac and Linux. For mobile it’s available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Regardless of how big Microsoft and Google is, Dropbox is the only service that currently natively supports Linux. It also used to be the only cloud storage service to support Blackberry. That’s until March 2014 when OneDrive announced their app for BB.

CONSUMER DEMAND RESEARCH TOOLS

Why use it: Search engine giants like Google get millions of searches per day. They collect all of that data. You can validate your product ideas by looking at how strong the current demand is for the topics or interests around the product. You can also use it to gauge whether or not it’s worth spending money on advertising.

Adwords Keyword Tool (free): Let’s say you have a computer repair business in Los Angeles and would like to know how many people are interested in that type of service. If you’ve signed up to the Google Adwords program, you get access to it’s keyword planner. The keyword planner has recently been updated to include trend data.

Consumer Barometer (free): This tool provides deep insights into how people in 39 countries actually go about researching and purchasing different products and service throughout all channels – both online AND offline! The tool doesn’t spit out silly stuff either. Data and insights were collected via surveys and the sample size in each country had to be at least 2,500 people. Some more advanced countries had bigger sample sizes as can be expected. Oh and the data is updated every year. This is an incredible tool for any business owner or marketer who needs to understand where and how to position it’s marketing communication throughout the respective channels. An amazing piece of work.

Grok (free): Wikipedia is the biggest content hub on the web. It ranks number 1 for almost any keyword out there. Guess what, the stats on how many times each of those pages gets viewed are open to the public. A guys named Domas Mituzas put together a system to gather the access statistics from Wikipedia. Thanks dude! All you need to do is Google the keyword (don’t go too narrow) and take the name of the article and put it in Grok.

Example:

CONTACT MANAGEMENT

Why use it: If you subscribe to the newsletter publications of thought leaders, wouldn’t it benefit your business to get in contact with those leaders, at some point? Wouldn’t it be beneficial to know which social networks they use? Off course all these things will be pretty damn cool to have. And now you can. Check out my favorite two tools below:

Rapportive (free): Imagine being able to see all the social media profiles information of your Gmail contacts? Sounds pretty rad right? That’s because it is. Rapportive is impressive, and you’ll notice it the very first time you use it. Simply install Rapportive to your Gmail. Open up a recent email sent to you and voila – suddenly all their information is available in the right sidebar. Where they work, their social media info and even a list of most recent emails exchanged between the two of you.

Xobni (free): Rapportive only works for Gmail. Xobni works for everything (includes Outlook), but at a price. There’s been some changes to the company recently. They’ve been acquired by Yahoo!. We might see Xobni getting a revamp and it’s features being bolstered.

CUSTOMER RESEARCH

Why use it: One of the most important steps before and during growth stages of a business is to VALIDATE your ideas, concepts or products. Without validation from real people, you risk building a business around something that doesn’t really solve a problem or there being a need for.

GutCheck (paid): GutCheck allows you to do one-on-one interviews via video chat features – qualitative research! For businesses trying to validate anything, qualitative feedback is the best thing out there. Oh and they’re not expensive either. Way to go guys!

SurveyMonkey (free & paid): With SurveyMonkey you can build an online survey. The survey can be shared via link or embedded it on your website or Facebook page. Their free account allows you to ask 10 questions with 100 responses max per month. One would use the self-service tool if you have an existing audience you can tap into. But what if you don’t? SurveyMonkey also have a global survey panel (50 countries) which you can tap into. Supply them with your targeting criteria, geo-location preference and how many responses you want, and they’ll spit out a quote for you. Pricing varies depending on your brief.

DESIGN SERVICES

Why use it: I never went to design school. I don’t have the skills to design great websites or landing pages. I also like to boostrap by not spending thousands on design agencies. Luckily I found these two websites.

99Designs (paid): It’s a competition marketplace where designers compete for prize money. The prize money is basically your ‘budget’. They compete against a design brief that you create. What’s great is that you get to see several designs before you pick your winner.

Fiverr (paid): Pay $5 dollars and get someone to design you a logo, or maybe a book cover? Try Fiverr. I’ve used it for small jobs. Don’t expect world-class work for $5 though.

EMAIL MARKETING AUTOMATION

Why use it: Building an email subscriber list is without question the most important thing for growing your business. Email is king. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Email still dominates the world. It’s our primary form of contact. However, an email subscriber list is only good if you keep in contact with them. Doing it manually will kill you. That’s why services like the below exist – to make it easy. The three listed below I have personally used.

Getresponse (paid): Probably the leader in the market right now. GetResponse gives you everything – signup forms, beautiful landing pages, email template creation, spam tests, top notch delivery rates, a friggin mobile app and a whole lot more. I use their service and I love it. Best damn purchase I ever made.

Campaign Monitor (paid): Also one of the best out there. Pricey though. Some of my clients use this and I’ve had an opportunity to play around with the backend on many occasions. Very easy to use! They also have great integration capability. Lightning fast support.

Mailchimp (free & paid): A first-in-class for sure. A bit on the pricey side once you go over the free plan. Did I say free? Yes, they have a free plan! You get your first 2000 subscribers for free! If you are starting a business and need to keep costs down, then go with their free account. It’s the perfect place to start in my opinion.

Aweber (paid): Confession! I have never used Aweber before. There are tons of people who use it and love it, especially marketers – die hard fans. Aweber, being so popular and all, probably has the most app integration capability amongst all the email solutions.

IMAGES AND PHOTOS

Why use it: Having stunning visuals for your website, blog and product content is key. If you’re trying to differentiate yourself from your competition, this is where you can get the edge quickly – by making sure you have stunning visuals across your marketing touch points. Below are the 3 services I use regularly.

iStockphoto (paid): I use iStockphoto most of the time. It’s got a massive database of quality stock photography with thousands being exclusive to iStockphoto. You can grab a

Dreamstime (paid): Sometimes if an image is too pricey on iStockphoto, I find it on Dreamstime.

PhotoPin (free): A search engine for finding creative common photos. If you don’t want to splash out money on images, this is a great site to start with. When you do a search for images you’ll notice the first 2 rows on the results page are actually sponsored results. That’s because PhotoPin is an affiliate for Shutterstock – another stock photo supplier.

DotSpin (free & paid): Instagrammers also known as “Igers” have an eye for beautiful scenery. They take pretty pictures and share it with the world. Then someone came up with the idea of DotSpin. A place where Igers can sell their photos and the author doesn’t have to share who took it. Neat thing is, if you’re prepared to give the author credit you can use the pics free of charge.

IMAGE CAPTURE & EDITING

Why use it: When working in a team, sometimes the writing can’t get a message across like a visual. Screen capture tools allow you to do just that. Without them, my days would be half as productive as they are now. Imagine ‘editing’ on the other hand is a whole different thing. I like to edit images. I don’t have formal design training, but I have spent countless hours in my earlier years learning tips and tricks. Because of that I can make a lot of quick iterations for my website without paying a designer to do it for me. Having said that, if it’s a huge job I outsource it.

Techsmith Snagit (free trial): If you’ve never heard of SnagIt before, your life is about to change. Taking screenshots, editing them and putting them into Powerpoint, Word or your website content management system is a massive headache. People who still use Microsoft Paint to do this don’t know what they’re missing. It even has built in video capture. If that’s not enough, it even comes with a free app called “Techsmith Fuse”. With Fuse you can push any image to your SnagIt desktop editor in a few seconds. Free trial available.

Techsmith Jing (free): This is a lighter version of Snagit. It doesn’t come with an editor, but it has super fast screenshot and sharing features. Making a screenshot and copying the image to your clipboard is lightning fast. Still beats paint by a zillion miles.

PicPick (free): It’s like a swiss army knife. It can do screenshots pretty well and has an editor almost similar to SnagIt. Neither it’s screenshot nor editing capability is as good as SnagIt, but it’s a pretty good free option.

Adobe Photoshop (free trial): This is the KING of image editing software. The majority of epic designs you see today were most probably made in Adobe Photoshop. There are tons of tutorials on the web on how to do crazy cool stuff with Photoshop, but be warned, Photoshop has a bit of a learning curve.

Gimp (free): An open source (meaning free) editing tool with many similar features to Photoshop. Has a steep learning curve, so you’ll have to Google many ‘how-to’s’ when trying to do something in Gimp.

LANDING PAGE OPTIMIZATION TOOLS

Why use it: The goal with having a website or landing page is to have people who land on it, take action. Regardless of what the action is, you would want as much of it as you can get, aka your “conversion rate”. When I was doing affiliate marketing in 2003 I used to build loads of landing pages and drive Google Adwords traffic to them. I used to ‘split test’ the different pages. I had hundreds of pages on my server. Do you have any idea how much work and time it took to do split testing in the past? Today you won’t have that problem. I use the tool below to get the job done in minutes.

Visual Website Optimizer (free trial): Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) offers you the ability to run split tests on your landing pages. The genius thing about VWO is that the variations of your pages are not hosted on your website. It’s actually done inside VWO! It’s all done with fancy javascript manipulation. If you are going to do any form of paid advertising, you want to make sure that your landing page is optimal for conversions. Return on investment is what you’re after, right?

Optimizely (free trial): I have no experience in Optimizely. What I can tell you is that it’s a direct competitor of Visual Website Optimizer. Optimizely also offers a product whereby you can run split tests on your web pages without actually making any code changes to the page itself. I created a trial account once and I’m disappointing that I didn’t take enough time to review the service. My agency only used Visual Website Optimizer and I’m well aware that Optimizely is a direct competitor. From what I have read elsewhere, users seem to feel that Optimizely is a little easier to use (less complicated). There are some reports that at some point the Optimizely script was sometimes problematic on commerce checkout forms, but this is likely resolved now.

Clicktale (free & paid): This is not a split testing tool. Clicktale is a high end onsite user experience analytics tool. It’s got really advanced click tracking, heat mapping, scroll mapping and form tracking tools that can tell you exactly where blockages or usability issues are on your page. A tool like Clicktale can identify problems easily. You can then test the potential solutions with tools like VWO or Optimizely!

CrazyEgg (free trial): CrazyEgg is also a user experience analytics tool, but in my opinion a little less advanced than Clicktale. For the beginner to novice user it’s perfect though. Also it’s far less expensive than Clicktale when it comes to recording and processing big chunks of data.

SessionCam (free & premium option): Very different to all the above tools, but have some similar features.. Here you actually get recordings of how your visitors browsed your website. You read that right – you actually see how their mouse moves around the page. It’s got some flipping rad features like zooming in on form submissions. It can also show you how people used your site on a mobile phone. Some similar features include heat mapping, scroll mapping and aggregated reporting data. They’ve got a free account. Get it now!

LEAD GENERATION TOOLS

Why use it: To build a big email subscriber list, the landing page and it’s forms need to look shit hot. Simple as that. You can’t screw around with crappy looking pages. You will just be pouring money and time down the drain. Get it right with the 2 tools I use:

Leadpages (paid): To build your subscriber list you need an effective capturing tool. Email automation tools don’t have the best looking capture forms. In walks LeadPages. All the top publishers are using LeadPages. And now I have too. Leadpages have stunning lead generation pages available. It integrates with tools like GetResponse or Mailchimp with a few clicks. You can also build really good looking lead generation popovers. It’s all hosted on your site or can be hosted on Leadpages.

Hybrid Connect (paid): This is a plugin for WordPress that I recently discovered. I’m very pleased with the purchase. Hybrid-connect is different to LeadPages. While LeadPages is superior when it comes to creating lead generation landing pages, Hybrid-connect excels at creating optin-forms & widgets. It’s super easy to set-up – if you’re on WordPress of course.

NOTE TAKING

Why use it: Your browser bookmark bar is not a note taking tool. If you like researching ideas or pulling together information for a project, you need a proper tool to keep it all together in an organised manner. Evernote is perfect for this…

Evernote (free + paid): Evernote is a free app that allows you to collect information into a virtual notebook. It syncs across all devices – desktop and mobile. So you can make notes anywhere, any time. They also have a browser “web clipper” that allows you to note down web pages or parts of it. There are a ton of handy features.

PASSWORD MANAGEMENT

Why use it: Agggh!! There is nothing so frustrating like forgetting your password. Most of us have learned not to use the same password on every site. Cause hackers, you know. I’m also forgetful. And I have too many email accounts. Life was tough until I discovered LastPass.

Lastpass (free + paid): With LastPass you can save all different your login details. It also centralises all the information in your LastPass account. Don’t worry, the data is completely encrypted therefore not even LastPass knows what your details are. Only you know. LastPass has a browser plugin which makes filling in forms with your personal details as easy as clicking a button. This is a must have tool if you spend a lot of time online.

SEO TOOLS & TRAINING

Why use it: If you’re not ranking well in the search engines for your chosen keywords, then you’re losing out on a lot of traffic. Having a high ranking for core terms also solidifies your brand with the viewer. You are immediately seen as an authority on the subject. No business can afford not to be on the search engines.

SEO book (free & paid): If you’re not hiring someone to do you SEO, then you have totackle it yourself. They also have a huge range of free and paid SEO tools. Many of those free tools are the bread and butter of many good SEO practitioners.

Moz local (paid): If you’ve ever done SEO to get local listings, you’ll know it takes a lot of time. Moz makes this easy with their Moz Local product.

Open Site Explorer(free & paid): If you know SEO, you’ll know how important inbound links from other authority websites are to your SEO rankings. Open Site Explorer can give you a view of all the inbound links, how authoritative they are, what anchort text was used and lots more.

SCREENCASTING

Why use it: Writing out a complex tutorial is a real pain. In 2006 I used Camtasia and Articulate E-learning suite to create a huge library of affiliate marketing training video tutorials for my students. With limited knowledge I was able to produce high quality videos with built in questionnaires which the students loved! Below are the top tools in the market today.

Camtasia (free trial): If you want to create professional looking screen recorded video tutorials, then Camtasia is what you need. I’ve used Camtasia for a long time and I can say that it’s easy to use and produces really good looking screen recordings.

Articulate’s Storyline (free trial): Build interactive learning courses that are coupled with questionnaires. Overlay your course slides with your own audio and annotate with special character packs. This is the most intuitive and advanced e-learning authoring tool on the planet. Will set you back roughly $1,500, but it’s flipping awesome.

Screenflow (free trial): Screenflow is like Camtasia, but made for Mac users only. Many Mac users who have used Camtasia say that Screenflow has the edge. Definitely check this out if you’re on a Mac. I’ve never used it, but hear great things.

SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGE CREATION

Why use it: Have you noticed how many pretty images with inspirational quotes are being shared on social media? I bet you have. Thing is, people love them. People engage with it. Myself and many other business owners realise this. I have been posting visual inspirational content to my audience and can see the difference in engagement immediately. The idea is to build engagement habits so that when you do post something like a link to an offer that they will be more receptive to your message.

ShareAsImage (free & paid): The guys from ShareAsImage saw this and created a platform that allows you to do just that. Choose from beautiful images, or upload your own, overlay your text and export in a second . You can even add your logo. Really simple. Super intuitive.

Canva (free & paid): If you need more features, Canva will do the trick. Canva offers you the ability to design on different size canvasses. You can upload your own images or choose from a massive library.

Piktochart (free & paid): If you think pretty pictures with quotes get shared a lot, think again. Infographics are king when it comes to shareable creative. I’ve never used Piktochart, but many of my blogger buddies use it and they swear by it. Give it a go and let me know how it goes!

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

Why use it: Look if you’re like me, you don’t want to spend all your time on social media. Problem is, there are SO many places where my audience is. They’re scattered all over. In past I had to spend time on each platform separately. Thank heavens those days are over. Now there are tools that help schedule posts as well as display all the conversations in one hub.

Hootsuite (free & paid): Hootsuite makes this really easy. In my opinion, Hootsuite is the best choice for any business starting out on social media or even aiming to increase outreach on the networks. It’s relatively simple to use and the free version has more than enough features for most.

TwitterFeed (free): I’ve been using Twitter feed since 2008 and I don’t plan on stopping. TwitterFeed allows me to take the RSS feeds of my blog and other publications and feed them through to my social profiles. What ends up happening is that my social media profiles automatically share high quality content at certain intervals. This tool is huge time saver.

SPY TOOLS

Why use it: Your competitors are trying just as hard, if not harder than you, to improve their position in the digital space. You cannot afford to fall behind. I’ve used spy tools for my clients to scope out their competitors and it helped me structure a strategy to beat the competition. A spy can’t be a spy without his/her tools. Gear up!

Adbeat (paid): Use AdBeat to gather intelligence on your competition’s Google and other display campaigns. Adbeat supports the most comprehensive list of ad networks out there. They can pretty much tap into any market globally. Powerful tool at a cost effective price might I add. Starts at $99 per month for Google only.

AdGooroo (by quote): We’ve used this for many of our clients. It provides very rich intelligence on competitor paid and organic strategies, exposes weaknesses and highlights opportunities. From the invoices I have seen gone out, I can say the pricing for AdGooroo isn’t cheap. I think at the time it was between $2,500 – $5,000 per month for two of our clients combined. Don’t take my word for it. Consider getting a quote from them.

SocialAdNinja (paid): They have a huge database of over 400,000 Facebook social PPC ads. You can get access to data segmented by gender, age, relationship status etc. or search by keyword. The whole goal of this service is to help you identify better opportunities in and around Facebook PPC ads. This is definitely the place for people who do a lot of Facebook advertising and who don’t want to waist money ‘testing’ on their own.

TEAM COLLABORATION SOFTWARE

Why use it: I can write an entire book about team collaboration. Time and time again I witness how companies’ service levels deteriorate over time because teams grow bigger and communication problems arise. As a result, customers and clients are unhappy and the poor line managers or client service people have to eat it all. If only they knew how use team collaboration software!

Kona (free & paid): For personal and small group collaboration. Kona is simple, intuitive, can manage different size teams, mobile integrated and it’s free. In 2013 a poll was ran on LifeHacker and Kona came out on top amonst user satisfaction.

Asana (free & paid) : An enterprise-level team collaboration system, yet simple enough for individuals or small teams. Asana is used by some of the most popular startups around the world. When I first used it I was amazed at how quickly I was able to find my way around. It’s remarkably intuitive for such a robust system. You can get a free account for up to 15 people. Any more and you pay.

LiquidPlanner (free trial): Powerful collaboration and project management system. I was most impressed by its Task Schedule Planner. It also has built in estimation for task completion dates. LiquidPlanner is the definite answer for when your projects are BIG and complex.

Podio (free & paid): It’s got it all and then some. Project management, team collaboration, workspaces etc. But the most impressive feature of Podio is that something called it’s App Builder. You can build your own team workflow (no tech skills needed). If you are sales manager with a team of 8 people, you can create workflow under which your team needs to operate. You can optimize the workflow too.

CentralDesktop (free & paid): This is the mac daddy. The big boss. If your organisation has the money, check out CentralDesktop. I got the guys from CentralDesktop to demo their product to us last year and I was blown away. It had everything you could ask for from a project management and team collaboration platform. It’s something special. Comes at a hefty price though.

TIME TRACKING

Why use it: Recording the time you spend on tasks are very important. By comparing the time spent on something versus the benefit gained, you can optimize. This is why time tracking in organisations is a growing concern and necessity across the globe. Even more so for Entrepreneurs and work from home folks. But make sure you get the right tool for the job. Check out the 3 tools below.

Klok (free & paid): Klok is a pretty straight forward time tracking app. I find it very intuitive and easy to use. The reporting is also very useful.

Timecamp (free & paid): Most time trackers use a manual stop-start. For most people that is perfect. For some it’s not. Some people who jump around between tasks every minute, need something that automates the process. Timecamp is perfect for those scenarios.

CreativeWorx TimeTracker (paid): I have not used CreativeWorx TimeTracker but it seems like it’s going to make a big wave. It’s got automated tracking, but it shares similar features of Klok. Best of both worlds.

USER EXPERIENCE RESEARCH

Why use it: Your paid and social marketing can only do so much. Once a customer lands on your website or landing page, you hope they convert. What if you could ask your website visitors to tell you exactly what they were expecting to get from your website? Below are 2 tools my clients have used. They work extremely well for gathering data on visitor ‘intent’.

Qualaroo (paid): If you want to improve the conversion rate on your website, start analyzing the ‘intent’ behind people’s visits. Qualaroo is a tool that allows you to understand what your visitors actually want and what’s stopping them from achieving it. This non-intrusive technology runs on your site in the form of a survey box. Many of the companies I have worked with love the data feedback.

iPerceptions (free & paid): Also an on-site customer experience survey tool. Their approach is different. With iPerceptions a user receives a popover when first visiting the site. The popover starts by asking you whether or not you would like to participate in a satisfaction survey when you are done browsing the site. If you choose YES, you will receive an exit survey. Response rates aren’t bad!

VIDEO CALLING / VIDEO CONFERENCING

Why use it: As much as we all hate meetings, they are very necessary. Face-to-face meetings will always trump calls or email. There’s something else about talking to someone face-to-face. If you are working with people who are on the other side of the country or world, then why not get them on a video call?

Google Hangouts (free): Use Google Hangouts to turn any conversation into a video call with up to 10 friends. You can share web cams or your can share your screen. I love Hangouts because it’s easy to use, it’s built into a social network, it’s fast and coolest of all, it’s free.

Skype (free & paid): Skype has been around for a while now, so chances are pretty good you are familiar with it. But did you know it has a group call feature? You can add up to 25 people to a group call. One really nifty feature of Skype is that you can use your Skype credits to dial people into the call who don’t have Skype (from their mobile or landlines).

WEB ANALYTICS TOOLS

Why use it: Your website is an indispensable part of your marketing mix. It’s arguably the most important thing when it comes to your online assets. To grow your business it’s important to understand how your marketing efforts are paying off. Web analytics tools can give you insight into how you are doing. It can tell you where your visitors are coming from; how many of them visited your site; what they found most interesting; what they didn’t find interesting and much much more. Not having analytics installed on your website is a massive mistake. Get it!

Google Analytics (free): By far the most well known, most widely used web analytics platform on the web. Google analytics is completely free. Over the years it has grown into a beast. If you know a bit about web analytics then give Google Analytics a try. For most people GA is a bit too complex. If that is the case, check out the next tool on this list.

Clicky (free & paid): I have recently installed Clicky on my website, alongside Google Analytics. Clicky really impressed me. It’s super simple, it collects really deep, insightful data and it’s also free. Well, if you get more than 1 million page impressions per day, then Clicky will start charging you.

KissMetrics (paid): A tool that isn’t entirely a web analytics tool. It’s more like customer analytics. The data is incredibly in-depth. Kissmetrics can give you data around the lifetime value of your customer. They’ve given business owners the ability to see into the future – sounds kind of lame I know. Let me put it this way. Kissmetrics tracks the data of unique users, aka a person. If you buy from a business once (and you like the experience), chances are good you’re going to do that again. Imagine you buy from a business 4 times a year. Their web analytics don’t know the journey YOU took. They only know, from looking at their sales records, that you purchased 4 times. Kissmetrics however can shine the light on your purchase behavior rather. That is the type of data that can help a business optimize it’s funnels to improve bottom-line. Powerful stuff.

WEBSITE CREATION

Why use it: Without a website you don’t have a central presence online. It’s the one place on the web where your brand can stand on it’s own. It’s where your brand has a voice. Your website is an asset. Your business own it. I’ve seen businesses start their online presence with a Facebook profile. Look where that got them now. Facebook’s recent algorithm change had a huge impact on business pages. Businesses who didn’t build an audiece via their website or blog are now in big trouble.

WordPress (free): BROEKMANcomm.com is built on WordPress. If you’re trying to get your business online, WordPress is the perfect CMS for the job. It’s robust, feature-rich, scaleable and it’s free. There are loads of premium WordPress themes available. Just Google “wordpress premium themes” and you’ll find a gazillion to browse through.

SquareSpace (paid): If you don’t want to get into all the technical setup of your website, then check out SquareSpace. They make it really easy for a business to get a web presence. It won’t look crap either. They have some awesome templates, plus your website will be mobile responsive. It even comes with built-in e-commerce functionality, making it easy for you to sell your stuff online. You won’t have the same level of customization available to you like on WordPress, but heck…most people don’t need to go that far. I have to confess, I have not used it. I have watched an episode of Small Empires on The Verge about SquareSpace. They showed the ins and outs of what makes it good.

WRITING TOOLS

Why use it: If you’re like me, you probably hate the writing process. Constructing great content isn’t easy. I find myself doing lots of digging around the web to validate certain things. That means me having to open 20 chrome tabs and noting down things in notepad or word. That’s all in the past now thanks to these 2 writing tools.

Scrivener (free trial): It’s a complete writing studio. A writer’s dream. It makes the process of writing so much easier because it helps you organise your writing. It also has a ‘distraction free’ mode for writing. It’s fit for any type of writer, whether you are a blogger, journalist or even book writer. Scrivener is definitely one of my most used apps.

StyleWriter (free trial): The one thing Scrivener cannot do is make you a better writer. You see, writing is an artform. The key to getting your message across to your audience is to write in plain English. People hate reading complicated words and phrases. StyleWriter helps to improve the readability of your writing and I must say, it’s probably the best software I’ve come across for doing this properly.

FREE SEO AUDIT

What’s My SEO Score?

Enter the URL of any landing page or blog article and see how optimized it is for one keyword or phrase.

WORDPRESS MAINTENANCE & UPGRADES

For over 10 years, we’ve been developing, managing, updating and moderating WordPress-based websites. One thing we’ve learned along the way, similar to ANY website and ANY content management system, keeping the foundation integrity solid requires minimal, but constant love and care = AKA maintenance.As part of our one-off or monthly retainers, we offer the following services as part of our WordPress management agreements:

If clients desire a MIGRATION / TRANSFER of their website from an old outdated theme, we do offer several affordable solutions to utilizing your existing content and images while allow you to UPGRADE your website to a more responsive theme. Responsive theme means that your site will automatically shrink/reformat by itself when visitors are on mobile or tablet devices WITHOUT needing a different break-out website. 🙂 Here are some of the steps in the process:

Provide you with 1-3 sample DEMO website themes for you preview BEFORE purchasing.

By visiting the demo sites, you can see the “look and feel” and user experience of the site

You can also preview the site’s dozens of functionality enhancements (FOR FREE) giving you some creative brainstorming to IMPROVE your website and take it to the next level when budget permits!

There is a one-time fee of $58 for the framework from ThemeForest.net

We agree to choose a theme that supports mobile and tablet devices FIRST and then looks pretty on desktop!!

Upon approval, we install the theme.

We migrate and transfer all content from the old site to the new site (which is pretty seamless)

We will typically develop a new home page but can certainly do something similar to your existing home page; every theme is different. The latest WordPress theme technology has changed dramatically offering so much more.

Will get a theme that supports a slideshow using the Revolution Slider plugin, today’s benchmark!

All in all – site themes use a framework called WP Bakery or Visual Page Composer that launch templates for the site – so creating NEW pages in future will be quite easy. However, it does take someone like me a good 1.5 hrs minimum per page on the site to set it up. Home pages take 4-5-6 hours to get set-up.

As added value, we typically take a small quantity of text-based updates (2-4 pages), however we try to EMPOWER you by providing WORDPRESS TRAINING again to educate you on how to manage updates yourself easily and without costly updates from freelancers like us!

BENEFITS of WORDPRESS

With someone motivated internally, we teach you how to manage this site internally, which is ALWAYS our intention.

The primary benefit of WP is the easy of use in publishing / managing your own pages without someone like me chiming in!

The second benefit is for SEO…Search Engine Optimization…. please google “Real Estate Publicity” and tell me who is #1. 🙂

FINANCIALS

We typically do a 50% deposit upfront followed up with either a 25% at the progress 60-70% marker and the balance upon completion of the project (the launch). We’re open to work with you and your budget.

OTHER COSTS FOR YOU NEW USERS

Buying your first domain and paying for hosting are critical but inexpensive pieces of “owning” your website. We work with either MDDhosting.com or GoDaddy. Domains cost $13 per year and are renewably EACH year. Hosting typically costs around $60.00 for the year and is also renewably year to year. 🙂 Yes, there are deals to buying MORE upfront, but I find that giving you an affordable start-up cost is better than locking you in to a 3-5 year deal with a company that can change over time!

When creating or editing a WordPress page or post, you can easily embed many different types of media at any time using the WordPress “Add Media” tool.

Embeddable media include:

Images

Audio

Video

Documents of various types

The following will take you step by step through the process of embedding media into your content.

Step 1 – Placing your cursor

In order to embed media in your page or post content, you must first insert your cursor in the place in the text where you want the media to appear. By placing your cursor within your text, you can embed media inline with your content. You can also place your cursor on a blank line if you want the media to appear by itself.

Tip: It’s a good idea to place your cursor on the left margin of your text, even if you want media to appear on the right. This is because there is a special setting called Alignment that allows you to control whether the image appears on the right or the left side of the text. It even automatically controls how text flows around media embeds.

Step 2 – Click the Add Media button

Once you’ve placed your cursor on the line where you want your media to appear, click on the Add Media button to launch the media uploader interface, then select the Insert Media option from the list of actions in the left side of the media uploader window.

As of WordPress 3.9, you may also drag media directly onto the editor to upload them.

Step 3 – Add or Select Your Media

You can upload or select the media you want to add to your page or post by choosing from either of the following options in the center of the media uploader window:

Upload Files: Upload the media you want to use from your computer by dragging it into the upload area.

Media Library: Select from any previously uploaded media in the media library by clicking on the one you wish to add to your page or post.

Once you have selected or uploaded the media you want to add, you will see a checkbox next to the thumbnail confirming your selection, and you will see the selected media displayed in the Attachment Details pane on the right hand side of the media uploader interface.

Step 4 – Attachment Details

The Attachment Details pane displays a small preview or icon as well as important information such as the filename, date uploaded, and dimensions in pixels for image files or length for audio/video files.

Title

The name of this media.

Caption

Brief explanation. This text will be displayed below the image.

Alternate Text

Text to describe the media. Used for accessibility.

Description

An explanation of this particular media.

The Attachment Display Settings pane controls how the media embed will be displayed when viewed on the site.

Alignment

Left, Center, Right, or None

Link To

Media File, Attachment Page, Custom URL, None

Link URL

Read only display of the media URL or web address.

Size

Thumbnail, Medium, Large, Full Size

Available sizes depend on what sizes were generated for the image at the time it was uploaded based on the sizes in Settings > Media compared to the original image size. a size will only be generated if it the dimensions are equal to or smaller than the original image size.

For images, there are also action links that allow you to Edit Image, which takes you to the Edit Media page, or to Delete Permanently to remove the image from your site.

Image Alignment

The Alignment setting allows you to determine where you would like the image to appear in your content area and how it interacts with any text on the page. You have the following image alignment options to choose from:

Left: Aligns the image on the left hand margin, and any text that is on the page wraps (or flows) around the image to the available space on the right.

Right: Aligns the image on the right hand margin, and any text that is on the page wraps (or flows) around the image to the available space on the left.

Center: Aligns the image to the center of the page, with no text displayed around it.

None: Inserts the image in to the page with no alignment

Top row: Left and Right alignments. Bottom row: Center and “None” alignments

Image Link

The Link To settings determine where someone is taken when they click the image. You can specify the following image link settings:

Media File: Links your inserted image directly to the original, full-size version of the file.

Custom URL: Allows you to set a custom link URL for your inserted image to link to when clicked.

None: This setting will remove the link completely, rendering the image “un-clickable”.

Image Size

The Size settings determine the size of the image you are adding to your site. By default WordPress creates a range of four image size for you to choose from:

Thumbnail: Displays a small thumbnail-sized version of your image on the page/post. Note, by default the Thumbnail size is a square, so some cropping of your original image may occur.

Medium: Displays a medium-sized version of your image on the page/post. This is a good size to use with Left/Right alignments, as it leaves sufficient space for legible text to either side.

Large: Displays a large-sized version of your image on the page/post. Note: WordPress will determine the width of the content column of your theme, and display the largest possible image for that space.

Full Size: Displays a full-sized version of your image on the page/post. Note: WordPress will determine the width of the content column of your theme, and display the largest possible image for that space. If your original image is larger than this column width, the full size of the image may not be displayed.

Thumbnail, Medium, and Large image sizes (Image Alignment: Left)

You can visit the Settings > Media section of your WordPress dashboard to customize the image sizes. Note that the the sizes and the thumbnail crop are set at the time the image is uploaded. Those generated images then become the size options shown here.

As of WordPress 3.9, you can now grab the handles that appear when you click on an image and resize the image by dragging.

Step 5 – Inserting Media

Once you have determined your embed settings, click on the Insert into post or Insert into page button at the bottom right to add the media. After the media uploader window closes, you will see the media in the editor window.

Image Details

There are several options available for modifying image details after an image has been added. To change image details, click on an image in the editor and then click the edit icon to open the Image Details screen, or remove the image by clicking the “x” icon.

The Image Details screen can be used to modify image attributes for individually inserted media files. Click the “Advanced Options” heading to see additional options.

Caption: Brief explanation. This text will be displayed below the image.

Alternative Text: Text to described the media. Used by screen readers.

Align: Image placement within the content area.

Size: Selected sizes based on images sizes generated at upload time.

Link To: Destination when someone clicks on an image.

Image Title Attribute: Sets a title for the “img” HTML tag. Used as a tooltip that appears when you hover over the image.

Image CSS Class: Adds a CSS class to the “img” HTML tag that can then be used to style the image via a custom CSS plugin or a child theme.

Changes in 3.9

As of WordPress 3.9, some image details settings such as borders, margins, and styles are no longer available in the Image Details screen to try to encourage best practices in content management by reducing the amount of inline styling added on a per-image basis. Adding inline styles instead of relying on the theme or custom CSS can lead to bloated HTML which can then make it difficult to keep images looking good in various display sizes (including mobile views) or after switching themes. Ideally, a well-coded theme will handle image borders and margins sufficiently. However, if you do still want to add inline styles for some images manually, you may still do so using HTML editor by clicking the Text tab at the top right of the edit area and adding inline CSS. There are also plugins available, such as Advanced Image Styles, which will add back options in the Image Details screen for image borders and margins.

The source field was changed to a “Replace” button located just below the image inside the Image Details screen. If you want to use an image that is not located in your media library and that you don’t want to upload into your media library, you should add it by using the Add Media > Insert from URL option.

THANK YOU WordPress for creating AMAZING how-tos for us to teach ourselves and our clients!!!
http://codex.wordpress.org/Inserting_Media_into_Posts_and_Pages

First, big shout out to WPbeginner.com for always having fantastic answers to core WordPress issues. This one is coming up more and more for my clients. Thought it helpful to continue aggregating common issues/resolutions here in the411. Nothing worse than looking for answers and reinventing the wheel! 🙂

Why is my WordPress site not Updating?

Before we explain the solution, it’s important to understand what causes the problem first.

There are two common causes for this issue. The first one is your browser cache. Sometimes your browser (specially Google Chrome) will show you a cached copy of your website instead of showing the new one. To resolve this issue, you need to simply hit CTRL + F5 (or Command + R on a Mac) buttons on your keyboard to reload the page.

The second and most likely cause of this issue is a missing!!! or poorly configured WordPress caching plugin. To see if a caching plugin is causing this problem, you need to see if you’re using a caching plugin on your site.

The first thing you can do is try to Empty All Caches using your cache plugin settings area.

You can do this easily by going to plugin settings page (in our demo, we’re showing W3 Total Cache). Then click Empty All Caches.

This should work for most folks and now the changes should be visible on the homepage.

Next, you should look in your plugin settings to see if you can control what is cached by the Page Cache functionality. In W3 Total Cache menu under Page Cache, there is an option to unselect caching of front page.

If you unselect that, then the front page will not be cached.

Now if none of the above solutions worked for you, then you should deactivate any cache plugin installed on your WordPress site.

After deactivating the caching plugin, you need to visit your website to see if this resolved the issue. If it does, then this means you need to setup your cache plugin correctly.

BIG SHOUT OUT TO CSSFONTSTACK.com for putting this together!

What are Web Safe Fonts?

Web safe fonts are fonts that are pre-installed by many operating systems. While not all systems have the same fonts installed, you can use a web safe font stack to choose several fonts that look similar, and are installed on the various systems that you want to support. If you want to use fonts other than ones pre-installed, as of CSS3, you can use Web Fonts.

Why is my site slow?

Your site can feel slow for two reasons. It can take a long time to generate a given page on the server side or it can take a long time to load the site in your browser. It can also feel slow for both reasons combined! For more information, see Top 5 Website Performance Problems.

If you’re using WordPress®, you can try Troubleshooting Common Issues in WordPress. W3 Total Cache is a performance optimization framework for WordPress, that is designed to work in any type of site or web hosting account.

You can also use free third-party tools to troubleshoot the cause of your site’s slowness and to make a plan for your next moves.

To Use Pingdom to Determine Site Slowness

If you see a large page size (more than 1 MB), then your site requires the browser to download a lot of files before it can display your site’s content.

If you see a high number of Requests (more than 100), then your site requires the browser to make a lot of connections to display your site’s content. Try to display less content from third-party sites, combine JavaScript and CSS files, use CSS sprites, and enable caching headers to make the browser do less work.

If you see any 4xx or 5xx errors on the Page Analysis tab, that means your site is referencing a URL that doesn’t exist (cannot be found), or otherwise is generating an error. You should investigate to see which URL is causing the error and fix it.

If you see any 3xx statuses on the Page Analysis tab, that means you’re referencing a URL that is causing a redirect (an additional request). You should investigate to see which URL is causing the redirect and fix it.

Under the Page Analysis tab, if you see a large amount of time spent on another domain under Time Spent per Domain, this means another site’s content could be slowing down your site in the customer’s browser. You should investigate this further.

It’s quite possible that your website is slow because of one of the five issues below. Check them out, and see how they relate to your site.

Page Size — The bigger your page, the longer it takes to download, especially over slower connections.Big images are probably the number one cause of slow loading pages. Most image creation software has image compression options. There are also online tools, such as Smushit by Yahoo®! that can help you compress large images. You should make sure that each image on your website is optimized for the Web. Also, resize images to fit the width and height you want them to display on your page. We often see people upload giant 2000-plus pixels-wide images they snapped with their digital cameras and then use the width and height parameters to shrink them, like this <img width=”500″ height=”300″>. Don’t do that. If you say width=”500″ height=”300″ in your img tag, the image should be optimized and 500×300 pixels.

Time to 1st Byte — An increased time to 1st byte means there are too many SQL queries or non optimized SQL queries. This can also include server-side calls to third-party API. If you’re running WordPress, get the WordPress Plugin P3 Profiler to discover what plugins are running what queries and how long each one takes.If you’re a WordPress user, there are a number of plugins you can check out. We’ve seen caching plugins affect performance both positively and negatively on customer sites and it’s largely dependent upon the traffic, and how dynamic the site is. Popular choices for WordPress are WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, Batcache and Tribe Object Cache. These plugins offer various page, database and browser cache features. Try each one out (one at a time, not all at once) and see what works best for you.

Total Objects and Third-Party Objects — Too many objects on your page will require visitors’ browsers to perform the request and receive pattern too many times and slow down your page. Try combining JavaScript and CSS. Use sprites for your images. You could use mod_pagespeed to help automate this for your site. For more information, see Which mod_pagespeed functions do you support? Also be wary of how many third-party domains you’re using. Too many social buttons cause problems. If you use WordPress, you might want to check out the WordPress plugin Lazy Social Buttons.

Cached Objects — You want browsers caching your site. You need to instruct the Web server to enable expires headers on your static objects. This tells browsers to cache the site. This is not currently enabled by default on our Windows hosting plans, but is available for Linux plans. For more information, see Enabling mod_expires with Your Hosting Account.

Text Compression — If you don’t have text compression turned on, your page is going to be slow. We turn this on by default on our Web Hosting plans, so your if your page is suffering from this, it’s either because of third-party objects, or it somehow got disabled on your hosting account. See Enabling mod_deflate with Your Hosting Account for more information.

Welcome to WordPress 4.0

Manage your media with style

Explore your uploads in a beautiful, endless grid. A new details preview makes viewing and editing any amount of media in sequence a snap.

Working with embeds has never been easier

Paste in a YouTube URL on a new line, and watch it magically become an embedded video. Now try it with a tweet. Oh yeah — embedding has become a visual experience. The editor shows a true preview of your embedded content, saving you time and giving you confidence.

We’ve expanded the services supported by default, too — you can embed videos from CollegeHumor, playlists from YouTube, and talks from TED. Check out all of the embeds that WordPress supports.

Focus on your content

Writing and editing is smoother and more immersive with an editor that expands to fit your content as you write, and keeps the formatting tools available at all times.

Finding the right plugin

There are more than 30,000 free and open source plugins in the WordPress plugin directory. WordPress 4.0 makes it easier to find the right one for your needs, with new metrics, improved search, and a more visual browsing experience.

Tracking visitors with Google Analytics or Statcounter is one thing, but really understanding what catches their eye and what they click on? COME ON, you totally want to know.

WELL thanks to APPSUMO, we’ve got a free wordpress plugin to install. Heat maps with 1-click will show you instantly where people are clicking so you can improve your page to get them to do the things you want them to do. http://sumome.com/app/heat-maps

NOTE: The following is NOT the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. It is, however, a simple checklist that presents our recommendations for implementing HTML-related principles and techniques for those seeking WCAG 2.0 conformance.

Guidelines for using this checklist:

This checklist cannot be used to verify conformance with WCAG 2.0. You must reference official WCAG 2.0 documentation to determine any level of conformance or non-conformance.

This checklist should not be referenced in policies or in policy adoption. While this is a useful resource for technical implementation of WCAG for HTML content, it is not a useful policy checklist. Official WCAG 2.0 documentation provides much better mechanisms for implementing accessibility into policy or law.

WCAG 2.0 covers accessibility of all web content and is not technology specific. The language of this checklist has been targeted primarily for evaluation of HTML content. It is, therefore, fairly limited and subject to technology changes, whereas WCAG 2.0 is much less so.

This checklist contains WebAIM’s interpretation of WCAG guidelines and success criteria and our own recommended techniques for satisfying those success criteria. The first column of the table below links to the official WCAG 2.0 success criteria.

PerceivableWeb content is made available to the senses – sight, hearing, and/or touch

Images that do not convey content, are decorative, or contain content that is already conveyed in text are given null alt text (alt=””) or implemented as CSS backgrounds. All linked images have descriptive alternative text.

Equivalent alternatives to complex images are provided in context or on a separate (linked and/or referenced via longdesc) page.

Guideline 1.4Distinguishable: Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background

Color is not used as the sole method of conveying content or distinguishing visual elements.

Color alone is not used to distinguish links from surrounding text unless the luminance contrast between the link and the surrounding text is at least 3:1 and an additional differentiation (e.g., it becomes underlined) is provided when the link is hovered over or receives focus.

Guideline 2.2Enough Time: Provide users enough time to read and use content

If a page or application has a time limit, the user is given options to turn off, adjust, or extend that time limit. This is not a requirement for real-time events (e.g., an auction), where the time limit is absolutely required, or if the time limit is longer than 20 hours.

Automatically moving, blinking, or scrolling content that lasts longer than 5 seconds can be paused, stopped, or hidden by the user. Moving, blinking, or scrolling can be used to draw attention to or highlight content as long as it lasts less than 5 seconds.

Automatically updating content (e.g., automatically redirecting or refreshing a page, a news ticker, AJAX updated field, a notification alert, etc.) can be paused, stopped, or hidden by the user or the user can manually control the timing of the updates.

The purpose of each link (or form image button or image map hotspot) can be determined from the link text alone, or from the link text and its context (e.g., surrounding paragraph, list item, table cell, or table headers).

Links (or form image buttons) with the same text that go to different locations are readily distinguishable.

If a web page is part of a sequence of pages or within a complex site structure, an indication of the current page location is provided, for example, through breadcrumbs or specifying the current step in a sequence (e.g., “Step 2 of 5 – Shipping Address”).

Expansions for abbreviations are provided by expanding or explaining the definition the first time it is used, using the <abbr> element, or linking to a definition or glossary. NOTE: WCAG 2.0 gives no exception for regularly understood abbreviations (e.g., “HTML” on a web design site must always be expanded).

When a page element receives focus, it does not result in a substantial change to the page, the spawning of a pop-up window, an additional change of keyboard focus, or any other change that could confuse or disorient the user.

When a user inputs information or interacts with a control, it does not result in a substantial change to the page, the spawning of a pop-up window, an additional change of keyboard focus, or any other change that could confuse or disorient the user unless the user is informed of the change ahead of time.

Substantial changes to the page, the spawning of pop-up windows, uncontrolled changes of keyboard focus, or any other change that could confuse or disorient the user must be initiated by the user. Alternatively, the user is provided an option to disable such changes.

Guideline 3.3Input Assistance: Help users avoid and correct mistakes

Required form elements or form elements that require a specific format, value, or length provide this information within the element’s label.

If utilized, form validation errors are presented in an efficient, intuitive, and accessible manner. The error is clearly identified, quick access to the problematic element is provided, and user is allowed to easily fix the error and resubmit the form.

Special thanks to WEBAIM.org for publishing the first real extensive easy to navigate list of compliancy with simple Pass/Fail explanations. GREAT JOB! Original found here: http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist

Part 1: HTML

The following standards are excerpted from Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, §1194.22. The pass/fail criteria in this document represent an interpretation of Section 508 web standards. This checklist is NOT official Section 508 documentation. For the full text of Section 508, please see theofficial government 508 web site.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(a) A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via “alt”, “longdesc”, or in element content).

Every image, applet, embedded media, plug-in, etc. that conveys content has equivalentalternative text (alt,longdesc, or in the element context).

A non-text element has no altor text description or the description is not equivalent, or is not described in the adjacent text.

Alternative texts are verbose (“picture of…”, “image of…”, etc.), vague, misleading, inaccurate, or redundant to the context (e.g. the alt text is the same as adjacent text).

Complex graphics (graphs, charts, etc.) are accompanied by equivalent text, either through a description in the body of the page, a link to a description on a separate page, and/or thelongdesc attribute. [See Note 1]

Complex graphics have no alternative text or the alternative does not fully convey the content of the graphic.

Images that have a function (images within links, image buttons, and image map areas) have alternative text which describes the associated function.

Alternative texts for linked images, image buttons, or hot spots are not descriptive of the function.

Tables used for layout have headers identified when there are no true headers.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(h) Markup shall be used to associate data cells and header cells for data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers.

Data table cells are associated with the appropriate headers using the scope orid/headers attributes.

Data table cells are not associated with column and/or row headers or they are associated incorrectly.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(i) Frames shall be titled with text that facilitates frame identification and navigation.

Each frame is given a titlethat describes the frame’s purpose or content.

Frames have no title or atitle that is not descriptive of the frame’s purpose or content.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(j) Pages shall be designed to avoid causing the screen to flicker with a frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz.

No element on the page flashes at a rate of 2 to 55 cycles per second, thus reducing the risk of optically-induced seizures.

One or more elements on the page flicker at a rate of 2 to 55 cycles per second, increasing the risk of optically-induced seizures.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(k) A text-only page, with equivalent information or functionality, shall be provided to make a web site comply with the provisions of this part, when compliance cannot be accomplished in any other way. The content of the text-only page shall be updated whenever the primary page changes.

A text-only version is created only when there is no other way to make the content accessible or when it offers significant advantages over the main version for certain disability types.

A text-only version is provided when the main version is not accessible, but could be made fully accessible.

The text-only version provides equivalent content and is up-to-date with the main version.

The text-only version is not equivalent to or up-to-date with the main version.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(l) When pages utilize scripting languages to display content, or to create interface elements, the information provided by the script shall be identified with functional text that can be read by assistive technology.

Content and functionality provided by scripting is directly accessible to assistive technologies and the keyboard.<noscript> content does not constitute a suitable alternative to inaccessible scripting.

Content and functionality provided by scripts only work with a mouse or cannot be accessed by assistive technologies.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(m) When a web page requires that an applet, plug-in or other application be present on the client system to interpret page content, the page must provide a link to a plug-in or applet that complies with §1194.21(a) through (l). [See Note 2] [See Note 3]

A link is provided to a page where the plug-in can be downloaded.

No link is provided to a page where the plug-in can be downloaded.

All applets, scripts and plug-ins (including PDF and PowerPointfiles, etc.) and the content within them are accessible to assistive technologies, or else an alternative means of accessing equivalent content is provided.

Inaccessible plug-ins, scripts, and other applications are used without providing an accessible alternative.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(n) When electronic forms are designed to be completed on-line, the form shall allow people using assistive technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues.

<input>, <textarea>, and<select> elements have descriptive labels.

There is no association between the form element and its label.

Scripting of form elements does not interfere with assistive technologies or keyboard.

Scripting makes parts of the form unavailable to assistive technologies or keyboard users.

A link is provided to skip overnavigational menus or other lengthy lists of links. A good heading structure also facilitates navigation.

There is no way to skip over repetitive lists of links.

508 STANDARD

PASS

FAIL

(p) When a timed response is required, the user shall be alerted and given sufficient time to indicate more time is required.

The user has control over the timing of content changes.

The user is required to react within limited time constraints.

Note 1: Until the longdesc attribute is better supported, it is best to use it in conjunction with a standard link to a longer description. Note 2: Standalone media players are usually more accessible than embedded media players. Note 3: A PDF file can be made accessible to screen reader users, but it may be best to include an accessible HTML version of a document instead of or in addition to PDF. Accessible alternatives must be provided for PowerPoint files.

Part 2: Scripts, Plug-ins, Java, etc.

(a) When software is designed to run on a system that has a keyboard, product functions shall be executable from a keyboard where the function itself or the result of performing a function can be discerned textually.

(b) Applications shall not disrupt or disable activated features of other products that are identified as accessibility features, where those features are developed and documented according to industry standards. Applications also shall not disrupt or disable activated features of any operating system that are identified as accessibility features where the application programming interface for those accessibility features has been documented by the manufacturer of the operating system and is available to the product developer.

(c) A well-defined on-screen indication of the current focus shall be provided that moves among interactive interface elements as the input focus changes. The focus shall be programmatically exposed so that assistive technology can track focus and focus changes.

(d) Sufficient information about a user interface element including the identity, operation and state of the element shall be available to assistive technology. When an image represents a program element, the information conveyed by the image must also be available in text.

(e) When bitmap images are used to identify controls, status indicators, or other programmatic elements, the meaning assigned to those images shall be consistent throughout an application’s performance.

(f) Textual information shall be provided through operating system functions for displaying text. The minimum information that shall be made available is text content, text input caret location, and text attributes.

(h) When animation is displayed, the information shall be displayable in at least one non-animated presentation mode at the option of the user.

(i) Color coding shall not be used as the only means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.

(j) When a product permits a user to adjust color and contrast settings, a variety of color selections capable of producing a range of contrast levels shall be provided.

(k) Software shall not use flashing or blinking text, objects, or other elements having a flash or blink frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz.

(l) When electronic forms are used, the form shall allow people using assistive technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues.